A day in the life...with diabetes - A Ninjabetic Night
Monday, May 10, 2010 at 8:44AM It’s day one of D-Blog week. Thank you Karen for coming up with such an awesome idea. There are a GRIP of D-Bloggers out there participating so check them out!
Day 1 - A day in the life . . . with diabetes. Take us through a quick rundown of an average day and all the ways in which diabetes touches it. Blood tests, site changes, high and low blood sugars, meal planning, anything that comes along. This can be a log of an actual day, or a fictional compilation of pieces from many days.
Instead of a log of a day I will give you the highlights of the beginning of a day I had over the weekend. And here’s the thing, I am currently not in a happy go lucky mood so I apologize in advance for the ‘tude.
**CLANG CLANG CLANG**
"What the hell is that noise?” I turn over in bed and hear a weird sound. The clock says 2:33 at me which I know means it’s really 2:18AM. Why I move the clock forward to trick myself when a 15 minute subtraction problem doesn’t require too many brain cells is beyond me. Since the noise stopped, I turned over and instantly felt a tug on my stomach.
“Crap. My pump.” I follow the tubing from my stomach down the side of the bed and feel Master P clanging up against the bed frame. A Bungie jumping pump. Perfect.
While I was awake I figured I would take a quick glance at the CGM and see where I was. 164. At this point I felt like I should just get up and do a finger stick just to be sure. Plus that last diet coke was ready to evacuate the premises. I grabbed my machine after losing my soda weight and my blood sugar was….
386!
BOLUS PLEASE!
Back to the bathroom I went to look at my CGM sensor. It looked fine. No blood. Nada. I was so pissed that I just pulled the thing out.
My wife asked what was wrong. I told her it wasn’t a low or anything and that she didn’t need to worry.
I went back to sleep and woke up at 6:30 (6:15) to get ready for my day. I feel like a train hit me. My blood sugar was still in the high 200’s regardless of the correction bolus I did during the night. It was now the beginning of the actual day and yet diabetes had already set the pace. I spent the day feeling run down, tired, and fighting ups and downs trying to get my BG to cooperate.
Our days sometimes start long before the alarm goes off and the sun comes up. Diabetes is there lurking all the time and sometimes, it gets to work fighting us before we have a chance to fight back.
Reader Comments (20)
Dude! I set my clock 29 minutes ahead of time! For some reason it just makes me feel better.
And "I feel like a train hit me" is usually the way I describe a night of high blood sugars, too.
Yeah, those kind of nights are the suck. (fortunately/unfortunately for G, I'm a heavy sleeper.)
don't you wish you could use that alarm clock trick with blood sugar checks?
"It was now the beginning of the actual day and yet diabetes had already set the pace."
That sentence cut right through me, dude. You're so right.
I've always thought my reasoning for setting clocks ahead a bit was because I like math. Same excuse for using military time sometimes. And yet... given the annoying fact of the bolusing/correcting/overcorrecting/etc calculations that PWDs go through each day... maybe I don't like math so much. Maybe I'll re-set my clocks.
Oh how Diabetes is ever lurking, looming and setting up every moment for us.
All we can do is go with the flow of things.
Hope you are feeling better!
Btw, I did not sense a 'tude. Just sayin'.
My clock is 13 minutes ahead. Why 13? Because I have a harder time with odd numbers and math. Yes, I'm weird.
Awesome post. Most people don't realize what we go through even before the alarm goes off. I think the "easy" mornings are the exception, not the rule (sadly).
George - it is so true. Diabetes doesn't sleep and that means that we don't either. Each day's morning number really can set the tone. I hope today is a better day.
And thanks for your post to Caleb's blog. I can't wait to show him when he gets home. As always, I appreciate your support of him.
Till tomorrow...
early starts due to the D...sounds about right. Maybe I should start setting my clocks 15 minutes faster...might encourage me to get out of bed a bit quicker and deal with the highs that are always there D:
**CLANG CLANG CLANG**
hahah, dude I dropped mine yesterday and pulled the site out. It made a very similar sound when it hit the tile
Great post!
I hate when mornings start on a bad note because of diabetes. And creeping high blood sugars. Great post! I can really relate!
Oh how true!!! I hate that diabetes can ruin our day long before the sun ever comes up!!!
The clock thing - mine is 15 minutes fast.
And yup, that morning stuff definitely determines how the rest of the day will go.
Being attacked while we sleep is no fair. I call bullshit.
SO true! A bad night with diabetes can make the next day horrible right from the start. I wish I could get some "diabetes" extra sick days for days like that. Because after a night like that, I just want to lay in bed and wallow in frustration sometimes. I wish the CGMS technology was more advanced and more reliable.
Hope you have a smoooooooooth night tonight. :-)
My clock was always set 20 minutes ahead- until I started using my iphone as my alarm. Damn you Steve Jobs for not allowing me to manipulate time and space!
Middle of the night highs suck and make waking up next to impossible!
LYLB!
Kelly K
Can't stand that, when you wake up and it's dangling off the bed...
Waking up with a high or low sucks but battling it in the middle of the night really sucks! Bungee pump!!! Omg! Sheen I feel a rap verse coming in on.
Hey, we've all been there. I'm kinda glad non-PWDs don't know that cranky/crabby/crappy/sluggish/paranoid/needy high BG feeling. It makes it harder for them to relate, but it's just not a positive feeling.
Oh, and it cracks me up that you've named your pump "Master P."
I was so excited when I finished writing my blog post for tomorrow around 11:45 pm that I was finally going to be able to go to bed 'early'. Only I was 270 at 10 pm and had only dropped 20 points by midnight. Now I am waiting for my numbers to go down so I can actually get some sleep! :(