The Diabetic Roller Coaster is no Thrill Ride
Today I flew off the high end of the diabetes blood sugar level ride and crashed in a heap for four hours.
October of this year will check off 46 years since being diagnosed with Type I diabetes (that story is its own tangential link). At age 7, projecting 46 years is so far beyond reality it cannot exist. It’s well beyond flying cars.
Being diabetic is a life’s ride juggling exercise, diet, and injected insulin with the extra unpredictables of emotions, stress, and normal human lapses of judgement. I aim for a “normal” blood sugar level, but the ride is always fluctuating around that mean, with occasional fluctuations way low or way high.
As a kid, even into my twenties, my body seemed a lot more elastic with compensating with those ups and downs. In the last 10 years, though, I seem to experience more “surprise” low blood sugar episodes that have snuck up on me, or high zings that seem to happen for no reason (but there’s always a reason).
More, the recovery seems to take longer.
With efforts the last 2 months to trim diet and up the exercise (so far down 12 pounds, which is a good thing), the lows have grown more frequent. It’s almost unavoidable.
Lows are more dangerous and worrisome. At some low level I have never gone quite down too, I could lose consciousness, flop around in convulsions, or frankly, just die. The body will break down. The lows are treated with sugar, orange juice is recommended, but I also keep a stash of CANDY handy.
Yeah, it confuses people to see a diabetic chugging candy. But when my glucose is crashing, I have no focus to explain.
High blood sugar levels make me feel super groggy, lethargic, über thirsty; it’s a heavy unpleasantness. These are treated by an extra pump of insulin.
When I go dip into low blood sugar land, there is a chance of overcompensating, and sending it back high. And the reverse happens.
Hence the roller coaster. Up and down, down and up. Hang on to your stomach and hope you can get back to the level track.
This morning started with good glucose numbers at breakfast.
I am not sure what happened between 9:23 am and 12:31 pm.
I ate a bowl of cereal with half a banana. Drank two cups of coffee. Did some reading, writing, and social media on the computer. Watered the plants out back. Some time in there I felt a little shaky like I was low, and I think I grabbed some gummy candy from the jar.
But by noon I was not focused on work, and feeling rather groggy. Did I stay up late last night writing? Am I coming down with something?
Then I checked my blood glucose.
Holy bleep. Not a good number. Not good at all. It says it all.
That bad number explained it all. It’s not a good number to see. And I can easily get caught up in shame of screwing up your body. I can paw for reasons, like getting the wrong signals early when I thought my levels were low. Maybe I forgot to give my breakfast dose out of my insulin pump. Maybe the tubing was blocked.
The result is the same. I’m at that high point of the coaster, and only the way down is a “bolus” boost of insulin. I was feeling more than crappy, and set it for a big wallop, 19 units. All I want is to make that heaviness go away.
It does seem at this point way beyond 7 years old that the come down takes a lot longer.
Hours.
I ended up laying down and sleeping.
Two hours later, it had dropped to 330; that’s still high.
I reached for the bolus gun, and sent myself another 12 units of insulin. Any diabetics reading this know I am not quite doing this by the book. I’m tossing grenades.
Finally, some time after 4:00 pm I started to feel less groggy, I was now seeing the normal tracks of the coaster. I was able to get back to doing some work.
But the coaster does not stop. Now I am swinging too far in the opposite direction, dropping quickly in just 20 minutes.
Now 89 normally is a good reading… if you are on a long straight away on the coaster. I’m still dropping, and in a half hour, I’m reaching for the OJ (and leaving the candy alone) to try and swing the coaster back out of the trough.
After dinner, and even more hours later, I’m out of the humps and lumps of the ride. I’ve had lots of these rides, lots. It’s feeling more like they now come with some kind of hyperglycemia hangover.
There is no real hopping off this ride, I’m got a life ticket. And I can always do better, check the meter more when I’m unsure, and be a tad more conservative in my treatment of low blood sugars.
Of course, this is rather easy to write rationally. When I’m down in that low trough it’s scary to try and wait for some ingested glucose to take effect. All you want to do is climb out.
That’s the diabetic joy ride, every day. But I will take that ride over not riding.
Quasi un-related postscript: Mentioning the cornerstones of diabetic care as Exercise, Diet, and Insulin is a direct reference to a film they showed us at Camp Glyndon, the Maryland diabetic camp in the early 1970s. In the movie, a newly diagnosed diabetic kid is taught about the three factors by this animated elf named EDI, dressed in red if I recall.
My dimming memory is that I was a background actor in that movie, that they filmed parts of it at my camp? I can only find a WorldCat reference to it on videocassette but seeing that it was produced in Timonium, MD gives some small amount of oomph to my story.
But if anyone at Lousiana State University can check it out of the Health Sciences Center, and plop it in a VCR, you might find this kid in the background.
UPDATE: 24 Hours Later…
Checking in at 79 feels much much much better!
