Prepared For War, And Then....

I went to bed a few nights back. After dealing with a lot of overnight lows previously, I grabbed two juice boxes and several fruit snacks. I proceeded to show my ammunition to my mom and my Tay-dar and tell them "I am prepared for war."

Well.

Diabetes laughed.

I definitely did not need any of the ammunition I had prepared. My blood sugar was high all night, and I didn't realize why until 6:30 the next morning. Autumn (my Tay-Dar) woke me up and we smelled insulin. My blood sugar was in the 300s until that time because my site had fallen out in my sleep. Diabetes was also prepared for war. A little better than I was, apparently.

Naturally, that meant that my day started at 6:30 am. I'm actually not going to complain about that, because my days are usually better when they start then.

I guess I'm just posting this to remind myself and my readers how unpredictable diabetes is. I thought I knew what was going to happen, but diabetes proved me wrong. It's also a little scary when I know that I was only 184 by the time 6:30 came around--all of the insulin I was trying to give myself all night was on my bed, it was not in my body. Somehow, it dropped from 300+ on its own. That's very scary to me... It is predictably unpredictable, anyway. I've been good overnight so far since then, but I'm still waking up so I can make sure it stays that way.

Diabetes is INCONVENIENT.

Non-diabetic: "How did you sleep?" 

Me: "I'm a diabetic!" 

I didn't sleep at all last night because I was fighting with my highs and lows. I kept bouncing between 180 and 50 (I'm still only at 54, and it is 5:55am). I'm not even entirely sure why that happened, since I ate dinner a little later than I should have and everything! 

I had a rough time at work yesterday because my little monster kept demanding attention. I was 285 when I clocked in at 1:30, but by 2:30 I was only 70. It dropped from there and I stayed at about 60 for a while. I set a temporary basal of 1.0 unit per hour, which is .2 lower than my normal basal. When I went to break I had to eat a total of 156 carbs before it would go up. The scary part is I only bolused for 41 of those carbs, and I never went above 150. I had dropped back to 70 by the time I got home. 

What did I eat? 

1. I had an entire Cherry Coke = 70 grams
2. I had a bowl of broccoli cheese rice = 41 grams (which is what I got insulin for)
3. I had to have TWO boxes of apple juice = 30 grams
4. I had a grape juice/soda thing = 15 grams.
5. Total = 70+30+41+15=156 grams before my sugar would even move. I didn't get insulin until it started going up.

So that was all before I got home at 7 pm, and then it started again. I dropped back to 70, so I drank some more Cherry Coke because it was what I had in my hands. Then I had a fruit snack, I think. I honestly can barely remember most of yesterday. 

After I had my snack we had to leave because Mom had to bring Dad's dinner to work. My blood sugar stayed at about 118 until 9:30 pm when we had our own late dinner. I got an omelette to make sure it would stay below 180 until morning. Usually, if I eat something with more carbs than that I spike and it doesn't like to come down. That was not the case last night. 

We went to Walmart for some things before we went home. It started dropping again at about 11 pm, and by midnight I was only 50. I sat down in the benches by the restrooms and waited for Mom to checkout, I had a juice that she bought and a fruit snack. 

I went to bed when I got home, but I couldn't sleep because it felt like I was dropping. Initially, my sugar actually went up a little bit. I was at about 190 and my dexcom alerted me. I got .7 unit of insulin and rolled over to try to go back to sleep, but I never could because I still felt like I was dropping. And now I've been fighting with low blood sugars since 4:30 am, having eaten two fruit snacks and had a cup of apple juice. I've lowered my basal, too, which means I'm getting less insulin than I normally get.

I'm actually really proud of the way that I handled that, though. A lot of times I'll force myself to go back to work or sleep or home or whatever my goal was before I discovered the low. Yesterday and today, I said no and I meant it. I felt bad for making my family wait for me, but I had to make sure I went above 70 before I got up. That's my rule at work when I drop. If it isn't above 70, I can't go back to work because it drops too fast. So even though I felt bad, I followed my safety rule and waited. It went up in about 20 minutes. I can't force myself to go back to sleep when it's low, so I've learned. I don't really want to die, so I have to wait until it goes up before I can be unconscious. Today I just gave up and started my day. 

Lesson learned.

DIABETES IS INCONVENIENT.

My Little Hero

There are two ways I can look at this. I am going to give you the bad before I give you the good.

Bad: My annoying little sister wakes me up at 4:30 every morning so that I can check my sugar! That is her way of telling me that I cannot take care of myself and she refuses to let me sleep! Ugh!

Good (and how I actually look at this): I am so THANKFUL to have a little sister who is selfless enough to set an alarm for 4:30 every morning to make sure my sugar doesn't drop and I live to see morning. In so many ways, she is my little hero.

To be honest, I've never looked at it the bad way. Maybe once or twice when I had not slept very well, but never to that extent.

A few weeks ago I had a middle-of-the-night diabetes scare, where if I wouldn't have set an alarm randomly (I had no reason to, and I never do), I would not have woken up. My sugar was only 40 at 4am, but I didn't wake up like I usually do. I was in a very deep sleep. The next night at 4am, I was only 30. Every night since then my sweet little sister has come to check on me and make sure that I am okay. She makes me check my sugar and then we both go back to sleep. Until I was 18, my Mom did that for me. If I have been having a rough day with diabetes she will still check me throughout the night to make sure that I am okay.

Too often I read about diabetics who are "dead in bed." This basically means that their sugar drops too low while they are sleeping and they do not wake up. I never want this to be me, but it has come close quite a few times in the past year and it scares me a little more every time. I am so blessed to have a family that is willing to help me take care of my disease to ensure my safety! I am eternally thankful for that blessing. It is because of my family that I am still alive, and probably because of them that I do not have any complications from my disease.

I guess God just isn't done with me yet, so He decided to wake me up and let me stick around for a while. He never ceases to amaze me.

Hypoglycemia (Low Blood Sugar)

I can kind of change personalities depending on my blood sugar. Hypoglycemia--or low blood sugar--makes me act differently than either high or normal blood sugars. Low blood sugars make me dizzy, weak, tired, irritable and an overabundance of other things. Most recently, I have developed a side effect of depression with consistent low blood sugars.

I used to know when I was dropping. It felt like I was on a boat (and didn't have my sea legs). I would be really clumsy, dizzy and I felt like I was unstable or physically falling. Now I can't really feel my lows, especially if I have had many of them within a short period of time. Instead of feeling seasick, I feel depressed and I end up just laying in the floor. Melancholy and lethargic. I also get very short-tempered and I am mean with my words. I don't usually mean what I say, but I'm not very nice anyway.

I had to start realizing that when I act different it means that something is off (and my Tay-Dar was great for that!). Since I stopped being able to tell completely when I was low I had to come up with a different way to figure it out. This is the best I could do, but it has worked pretty well.

Lows can be hard to treat, depending on the reason. If it is an emotional reason I could eat all day long and it wouldn't solve a thing. If it's just because I over corrected for a meal, that can be relatively simple.

Lows are dangerous, especially in sleep, because going too low could kill me. I'd like to avoid that as much as possible.