Guest Post Week - Scott K Johnson
Wednesday, November 24, 2010 at 7:00AM Having Scott guest post is such a treat for me. He was the first person to ever comment on my blog and we have a friendship that more like family which I love. Thank you so much for contributing Scott. Your writing and the things you touch on force us to look at diabetes from a different angle than we learn about.
Things I hate about high blood sugars
The hours. When I find myself with a really high blood sugar I know I am in for hours of fighting. Hours of waiting for my blood sugar to come down, while trying to go on with my day like nothing is wrong. Don’t forget that I’m also trying to figure out why I’m high in the first place.
Slow Motion. I feel like I’m reacting to everything in slow motion. My mind is slow. My reflexes are slow. My body is slow. Everything is slow. It is hard because life itself doesn’t slow down. I think this is most noticeable while I’m playing basketball, but certainly also affects trying to work, think, or write. This brings up an interesting question though – is it possible that driving while high is dangerous too?
Urge to eat. Sometimes my strongest urges to eat are when my blood sugar is high. My theory is that my body feels yucky (and slow?), and my brain is looking for a quick “feel good” boost of carbs. I hate it because the last thing I need when my blood sugar is high is more food.
Sleepy. Wearing a CGM device has helped me see that when my blood sugar is high, or rising quickly, I get very sleepy. It is debilitating. I can’t focus on anything except trying to find a nap. It’s torture when I can’t nap. Torture. This touches on the first couple of points. Life does not slow down just because my blood sugar is high and I want a nap.
Pain. I have been playing a lot of basketball lately. Minimum of three days a week, often four days, sometimes five days. I used to think that my body had trouble coping with all of that vigorous and impact-filled exercise. But then I had a couple of awesome weeks where my blood sugar was right where I wanted it during basketball, and I felt great. I felt great during basketball, but I also felt great after basketball, and the next day too. It is the days where my blood sugar is high during basketball that I hurt afterward.
Damage. We all know that high blood sugars damage us over time, but it has always been a very vague concept for me. I couldn’t visualize what that actually looked like, or how I was being damaged. Visualizations are powerful, and my friend Wil painted a picture for me in his book “The Born-Again Diabetic” (which I highly recommend). The quote may be a bit long, but I hope you’ll bear with me.
“Quick biology lesson: you remember the red blood cell, right? Looks like a Martian flying saucer? Red blood cells are the FedEx trucks of your body, moving oxygen from the lungs to the cells and carrying out the trash. Well, Ok, I guess I’ve never actually seen the FedEx guy taking out the trash, but…
Your blood travels through miles and miles and miles of tubing inside your body: the circulatory system. To be exact, if you took the average human’s circulatory system and stretched it out you’d have 60,000 miles of highway for your blood cells to travel on…well, in. Everyone’s heard of the big players. Aorta. Jugular. Let me introduce you to the pawn on the chessboard. The capillary. Smallest part of this network. Hey, every cell needs food and oxygen, right? So red blood cells need a way to get to all of the trillions of cells that make up you. At the far end of your own personal universe live the distal capillaries. They are the smallest of the small, and logically enough are at the far ends of your body…your toes and fingertips.
There are two, well, four actually, other places where we find lots, and lots, and lots of capillaries. More on that in a minute.
Some of these capillaries are soooo small that they are actually smaller in diameter than the cells that pump through them. Remember our little red Martian flying saucers? Well, now you need to think of them as pancakes. Under normal circumstances they are flexible. They can hunch their little shoulders and wriggle through the capillary.
Unless they are encrusted in sugar. Then the pancakes become Frisbees.
I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what happens when a rigid object forces itself through a slightly too small soft-tissue space. Uh huh. I think you got the visual I wanted you to have.”
Powerful stuff, right? The other two (four) places Wil mentions are the eyes and kidneys. It is a scary thought to imagine your blood slicing and dicing all of these things inside our bodies.
If you live with type 1 diabetes, high blood sugars are impossible to avoid. Impossible. Our pancreas is broken, and the tools we have today are slow, imprecise, dangerous, and sometimes crude and barbaric.
I’m thankful for every single one of them.
Reader Comments (9)
WICKED quote. I've never agreed more with an analogy. Thank you!!
Thank you George, for the opportunity to take part in Guest Post Week. I appreciate it and appreciate joining up with all of the other great posters you've had so far.
I think my brain is going to explode. I'm going ot check my boys' blood sugars now. That visual is a powerful one.
Great post and great quote. Since my T1 child is only 2 and cannot articulate what highs and lows feel like this is so helpful. Thank you for sharing -
Wow.
This was awesome...that analogy REALLY helped me visualize what happens!!!
Thank you SO MUCH!
That really is the best way I've ever heard it put. Makes a lot of sense now.
My poor body!!
But I am looking after it and I do pretty well so I wont worry about it too much :)
We can also be thankful that our bodies are pretty darned good at fixing up problems if we give them the chance. Damage can be reversed, or at least stalled in some cases. Bodies are amazing things aren't they!
Nice post, Mr. Johnson. I have taught the circulatory system for the past 5 years, and I had never heard of the impact sugar can have of capillaries. Very informative... Thanks!
Well said Scott :) I love the quote...after dealing with Diabetes with my son for almost 3 years, it is the first time that I actually can picture what highs do to the body. What can I say Pancakes and Frisbee's are my kind of lingo!!
I love all your blogs, they are a pleasure to read..keep up the great work!
Funny thing is that this morning, my wife and I were actually talking about the detailed mechanism of how high blood sugar damages capillaries each and every time our daughter is high. This explanation was far better than the one that we came up with. And thanks for sharing what Diabetes feels like. As a parent, we're lucky to only have to go through the motions of managing our childs Diabetes without experiencing the physical pain and symptoms of high and low blood sugars.