Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Argh, argh, argh!

Sometimes I really hate this disease.

Okay, its not as bad as all that. My numbers have been.. okay today... I'm just tired of seeing my blood sugars run whichever direction they want. I've been trying to be a lot more careful when I can about my carb counting. If I'm home or even going to someones house, I try to bring my scale out and weigh the food and look it up in my book. Despite this, I still have moments of blood sugar crazies. Take a few days ago...

I was home alone while my hubby was at work at two different times that day. I was napping in the early afternoon. I had carefully figured my carbs for lunch. It was a meal I'd have before, so it wasn't difficult. I kept hitting my snooze button, even though I could feel my blood sugar might be a little shaky. It should have clicked that I needed to do something, but it didn't. Sometimes thats how these blood sugars go, right? Well, I finally rose from my nap and found my blood sugar had dropped to 37! Whoops! I quickly overreacted and drank more juice and ate more food than I should have. (When I get that low I feel like I'm starving so I tend to overeat).

This of course, led to dramatic high. I took care of that as best I could... using the same sliding scale that I always use with high blood sugars. It usually works fine. My husband had come home in between, but he then had to go back to work. So once again I was alone when I caught my blood sugar at 64. I was trying to be better about following my "low sugar" plan so I drank a small glass of orange juice and waited. As I was waiting, I started to feel worse. After about 15 minutes, I tested my blood sugar again.

It was 40.

Now, I don't usually have my sugars drop that much after the initial test. As long as I drank the juice, if its on its way down further still, it at least stabilizes and will be a similar number to the first test. Seeing the 40... well, I panicked. I don't have any other way of putting it. Perhaps it was the book I'd been reading, but somehow the thought popped into my head that my body was trying to kill me -- literally. I was sure that nothing I would do would bring it up. I drank some milk and some juice and then sat on the couch and cried as I tried to call my hubby (whose phone was dead). It was 11 o'clock at night so I didn't want to trouble anyone that might be asleep, so I sat trying to test and see what was going on. It reached 42, then 56 and finally 100.

I tried to stay up for another hour once my husband got home to see how much my panic would cost me. An hour later it was only up to 126, so I went to bed feeling pretty certain I'd be okay... and then I woke up high. Fortunately, at that point I was able to stop the roller coaster that I was on and level things off for the new day.

The most frustrating aspect of this disease is the constant fluctuations. Something that is working can suddenly dramatically change. I can have a couple of really good days and suddenly be spiking left and right. I just keep adjusting, keep calculating, and keep trying... Its all I can do. All I can hope is that the fact that I try will count for something.

On a side note, to try and help myself monitor things more closely I called my doctor and requested that he increase my test strip prescription so I can test even more times a day. This last month I've been testing more than I have test strips to cover. I'm going to run out early and that means buying them at cost -- not cheap. Hopefully he'll get that called in soon so I can avoid that. At least I'll have it worked out for future months.

Thanks for reading!