Flatline
Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 8:39AM 
All night my blood sugar hovered around 200. Almost a straight line. I woke up every time my Dexcom alarmed and bolused.
When I woke up this morning my bg was 197. GRRR!!
Am I getting sick again?
Did my site get pulled out?
Did the insulin go bad?
Haven’t I written this exact blog post before?
One thing that is a constant with diabetes is confusion. I am constantly confused by the outcome of almost every other bolus.
This is why it is so frustrating to hear, “Well what did you eat,” or “what did you do wrong?”
There is no right or wrong. We do what we are told should work and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.
If the rest of the world understood the inability to actually control this disease, I think we would get a little more empathy and little less blame thrown our way.
Reader Comments (8)
Usually when I get a line that flat, it means the sensor was not reading accurately! I tend to see more problems with this overnight. Maybe because asleep, my circulation is sluggish? It's always better, mentally if not for getting to the root of off-target readings, to blame our diabetes tools & devices than to blame our efforts!
Man, I hear you on this one. Everything seems to go in these invisible waves for me, sometimes for no reason levels run high or need a lot more insulin, other times very sensitive (and this isn't down to site management / old insulin).
Onwards and forwards I guess :-)
Today is like a revelation to me!
Between Scott's glucocoaster pic on FB last night, Kerri's post earlier, and now this one...I AM SEEING THE LIGHT!!!! CAN I GET AN AMEN?????!!!!!!!?????!!!!!!!!!!
I am not lying when I say that I seriously thought I must be one of a handful that JUST can't seem to spot on all the time...but when I hear that you guys -- the PWD's I look to on this journey -- when YOU GUYS have moments like the ones I've been having lately, it affirms that I'M NOT A LOSER!!!!!! (Well, not all the time, anyway)
HALLELUJAH!
Oooh, pick me, pick me! Happened to me last night too! Stupid pump was shaking the whole bed it was vibrating so often. Grrrr!
Holy crap, I am totally there right now, George. I've been between 240 and 250 for the past five hours. I test and correct every hour, but it just isn't budging. And I now have moderate ketones. I'm extra upset because for the first time ever, I just had to cancel the ballroom lesson I had schedule for tonight because I feel like crud and I probably shouldn't dance if I have ketones. I feel like crying - and I feel like crying to know that you are going through this too. (But I also oddly feel comforted not to be alone - although I wish you weren't stuck here with me!!) Sending positive vibes for your flatline to take a gentle nose-dive of 100 points asap!!
I think we all feel these frustrations, and the general perception that the patient must, somehow, be at fault. Each new news story on diabetes reinforces this perception, too, with the hollow claim of how "controllable" this disease is. After nearly 35 years of living with type 1, I have yet to feel as if I truly control diabetes, only that I am forever responding to it and having to change my strategy for dealing with it. That's a big reason why I advocate for the medical profession to abandon the term "control" just as they did with "noncompliant". It's B.S. and the only ones who don't know it are those who do not live with diabetes themselves.
A friend of mine had her son in the hospital this week. The endo there just didn't get that there is no firm sliding scale for this child. There are a million variables attached to it. Each rule in diabetes has a subrule that is ruled by a set of conditions. It is all variable. We can only take it one hour at a time and do our best. The rest is up to the meter to tell us where to go next.
"If the rest of the world understood the inability to actually control this disease, I think we would get a little more empathy and little less blame thrown our way." - I love that line G.
Times like this I wonder where the heck does the insulin GO?!