Diabetes is a daily struggle. I promise I won't fill your newsfeed with a sob story every day of the month, but today I was especially aware of the weight of my disease so I thought I would share.
So much goes into management that no one sees. In the 26 seconds 4-5 times a day it takes me to check my blood sugar, there is calculation and consideration of physical activity, food intake, emotional state, etc. Every time I eat something I think of the carbohydrates and longevity of insulin and future activity. Whenever I feel tired, or hyper, or especially melancholy, I consider my blood glucose level. No matter what I'm doing diabetes is in the back of my mind.
All of this came to mind this morning before I attended a special topics lecture during my lunch hour. Food was provided- something every college student gets excited about- and while I was trying to take notes in a history class I found myself instead thinkinga bout what they would serve, how many carbs I might eat, and whether I cwould need to bolus for the meal before heading up to the lecture. It had already been a long morning so I thought about whether they would provide soda and then of course how quickly I'd need to get up there in order to grab a diet Pepsi because there is always less diet than regular (clearly I was desperate for caffeine because I'm a diet coke girl through and through.) All of this distracting me in class because the advertisement said "food provided" instead of "sandwich bar with cookies to be served, 30-70 carbs per meal." Wouldn't that be nice.
Anyway I enjoyed the lecture and guestimated the carbohydrate count for the pizza and non-diet soda they provided fairly well,, but my morning really centered on my invisible disease. Thanks for reading, I hope this snippet of a day in the life helps some people see how 24/7 diabetes is. Happy Blue Friday!!
Friday, November 6, 2015
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Low-key preparation
You know those days when everything seems to be happening at once? Your phone is about to die but you're in the middle of a conversation with your mom whom you haven't talked to in several days, while you're attempting to work on an assignment that only requires 15% of your attention so you can semi-effectively write while "hm"ing and "uh-hu"ing to your mom, and five of your friends just walked down the hall and are excited to see you because you've been MIA all day due to your full schedule. On top of it all you know that as soon as you finish the conversation with your mom you have to write a 4-5 page essay and save the world from ebola all while trying to balance your social life.
College is challenging in many ways, especially in the middle of a semester, but diabetes makes it far more complicated. Because while you're on the phone and typing on your computer and actively avoiding your loud friends in the hallway you start to feel shaky and everything starts moving in fast-motion. A cold sweat begins on the back of your neck and you can't do much about it at the moment, but you can feel a low blood sugar coming on. So you quickly finish up your conversation with your mom and pause in typing on your computer to grab a juicebox and packet of skittles, rolling your eyes at the irony of the perfectly imperfect timing of such an occurance. Of course I would go low right now.
That's the thing, though. Diabetes doesn't concede to your demanding schedule. I realized while I was dealing with my low BG this evening that complaining and crying about the woes of diabetes doesn't help deal with the problem at hand, nor does it keep the disease from inconveniencing me again. In fact I was lucky that I was in my room when it happened and had immediate access to my stash of juice and skittles, because if it had happened an hour earlier when I was running around campus the low blood sugar would've been far more dangerous. It's being prepared and knowing your body that helps with the lows, prevents them, and ensures that when the inevitable happens you're able to handle a drop below your target number no matter what life throws at you.
So this evening, after I had stopped shaking and had double-checked my blood sugar to make sure I was in the right range, I made sure that the next time it happened I would be equally prepared. I added a pack of skittles to the side pocket of my backpack and monitor case and made sure my gym bag had a juice box. I triple-checked that my glucagon was closeby and that my friends knew where it was.
While the situation was initially an inconvenient additional stress to the evening, I decided to take it as a reminder that being prepared makes treating a low blood sugar take only 15 minutes of waiting for the juice to kick in instead of an hour of popping skittles and checking that I had stopped shaking because it took me 15 minutes to find my supplies while I continued to drop.
For those of you who live busy lives like myself and are living with such a disease, I cannot stress the importance of preparedness. It's easy to forget, especially after living with the disease for so many years, how important such precautions can be. In our case it can be life or death, so double and triple checking everything every once in a while is for the better.
My diaversary was a couple of days ago, 11 years strong, so the importance of advocacy has been on my mind more than usual the past week or so. Knowing that your friends are prepared is just as important as your own preparedness- it doesn't do you any good to have skittles in your purse if your friends don't know where they are and you're imobile.
Anyway, I'll step off of my soap box now. Carry skittles.
Best,
Heather
College is challenging in many ways, especially in the middle of a semester, but diabetes makes it far more complicated. Because while you're on the phone and typing on your computer and actively avoiding your loud friends in the hallway you start to feel shaky and everything starts moving in fast-motion. A cold sweat begins on the back of your neck and you can't do much about it at the moment, but you can feel a low blood sugar coming on. So you quickly finish up your conversation with your mom and pause in typing on your computer to grab a juicebox and packet of skittles, rolling your eyes at the irony of the perfectly imperfect timing of such an occurance. Of course I would go low right now.
That's the thing, though. Diabetes doesn't concede to your demanding schedule. I realized while I was dealing with my low BG this evening that complaining and crying about the woes of diabetes doesn't help deal with the problem at hand, nor does it keep the disease from inconveniencing me again. In fact I was lucky that I was in my room when it happened and had immediate access to my stash of juice and skittles, because if it had happened an hour earlier when I was running around campus the low blood sugar would've been far more dangerous. It's being prepared and knowing your body that helps with the lows, prevents them, and ensures that when the inevitable happens you're able to handle a drop below your target number no matter what life throws at you.
So this evening, after I had stopped shaking and had double-checked my blood sugar to make sure I was in the right range, I made sure that the next time it happened I would be equally prepared. I added a pack of skittles to the side pocket of my backpack and monitor case and made sure my gym bag had a juice box. I triple-checked that my glucagon was closeby and that my friends knew where it was.
While the situation was initially an inconvenient additional stress to the evening, I decided to take it as a reminder that being prepared makes treating a low blood sugar take only 15 minutes of waiting for the juice to kick in instead of an hour of popping skittles and checking that I had stopped shaking because it took me 15 minutes to find my supplies while I continued to drop.
For those of you who live busy lives like myself and are living with such a disease, I cannot stress the importance of preparedness. It's easy to forget, especially after living with the disease for so many years, how important such precautions can be. In our case it can be life or death, so double and triple checking everything every once in a while is for the better.
My diaversary was a couple of days ago, 11 years strong, so the importance of advocacy has been on my mind more than usual the past week or so. Knowing that your friends are prepared is just as important as your own preparedness- it doesn't do you any good to have skittles in your purse if your friends don't know where they are and you're imobile.
Anyway, I'll step off of my soap box now. Carry skittles.
Best,
Heather
Thursday, January 15, 2015
The Highs and Lows of College Life
A day in the life
Pros and Cons of bringing your average blood sugar down:
Pros:
- lower A1C
- more energy
- higher metabolism
- healthier
- better circulation
- basically everything
Cons: feel like death the moment you hit 300
All of the doctors and all of the science regarding diabetes management tells us that a lower average blood glucose is good. People who live with the disease concur with science, thank god. However living with the disease is far more difficult than the doctors make it seem. Whenever something, even the most minuscule of things, changes in your life you’re hit with a surge of worry regarding the affect it might have on your blood sugar. Maybe not everyone with diabetes can attest to this feeling, but I definitely can.
Going back to school for spring semester, for example. I’ve been back for less than a week and my blood sugars have already seen dramatic changes. I've had more lows than I had my entire christmas break and I'm feeling more energized with the lower blood sugar average which is fantastic. This evening however I had a high blood sugar- not dangerous but not much higher than was normal during my winter break full of cookies- and felt lethargic, dehydrated, and nauseous to the point where I had to lie down in bed for an hour and focus on my breathing to keep from throwing up. To make matters worse I was just coming back from grilling up some delicious-smelling chicken in the community kitchen and all of the smells that followed me into the room were giving me a migraine. It was horrendous.
There’s nothing worse than dealing with a bad high blood sugar, and there’s nothing worse than having no one at school to vent to about it. Sure you could complain about feeling like utter crap but your non-diabetic friends are not going to understand why, or really feel for you, like someone who’s been in the exact same situation would. It’s really tough living with diabetes in college sometimes because it is an invisible disease and I feel bad complaining about it. I feel like a broken record when I go to my friends and pull out the “diabetes card” in conversation, but the unfortunate truth is the majority of my problems revolve around the disease. I’ve had diabetes for over a decade now and I have yet to perfect my treatment. It’s mobile and ever-present and often unpredictable, leaving you feeling lackluster whether you’re suffering from a high blood sugar or a low. There are not-so-pretty days dealing with diabetes and today was one of them for me. Thanks for reading my rant.
Best,
Heather
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)