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Sunday 17 June 2012

A Day In the Life of Me, With D


7.30am – This is a sleep in for me. I wake up and I know I have to do a BGL check and I know that it is a full hour after my usual breakfast time. But I don’t want to get up yet because its cold outside and I’m still sleepy. It’s the weekend and I should be able to sleep in. So I roll over and fall back to sleep, slightly worried about not doing a BGL check.
8.30am – I get up and do my morning BGL check. 5.4. Not bad. I congratulate myself on my 1st morning BGL below 6 in a week. I eat breakfast (sugary sugary Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut) and skip my insulin because I’m about to go to a Zumba class. I usually exercise at night, so I have never skipped insulin before and I’m not too sure how this will work. Oh well, here’s hoping it goes ok.
9.30am– Arrive at Zumba and do a pre-exercise BGL check. 11.1. An hour after breakfast so that’s not too bad. I do the usual run through with my instructor as to where my jellybeans are kept and how to use my pricker in the event of my not being able to test my own BGLs. Exercise is a scary thing, because so many of my hypo symptoms replicate normal things that happen to your body during exercise and/or do not occur during exercise. For example, sweating, which is usually my biggest symptom, and shaking both happen to me during exercise. My other biggest symptom, being cranky about nothing, doesn’t happen because exercise makes me happy.
Halfway through I do another check to see how I am fairing. 7.8. Apparently I look disoriented at this point and the instructor, Sonja, asks if I’m feeling o.k. and I need any jellybeans. I tell her I’m fine and a look of relief spreads over her face. I’m sure the last thing she wants is to have to figure out how to help a diabetic in a hypo. I’m pretty sure everyone in my class is slightly afraid I’m going to just randomly become comatose in the middle of a song, because everyone ALWAYS makes sure I’m feeling o.k. Every 10 minutes. If it’s all the same to everyone else, I’d just like to get on with my workout.
10.30 – end of workout. Check my BGLs. 5.4. I know by now that this means as soon as I’ve had 10 minutes to rest I will plummet. So I eat a few jellybeans in preparation. Once I’m home I have the world’s biggest glass of orange juice. I want to clean my house but I know that will definitely make me hypo, so I leave it for another day.
12.00pm– Lunchtime. BGL check is 4.8. I have a big-ass bowl of stir-fry and a glass of apple juice. In total this meal contains approx 60gm of carbs. Yes, I count carbs. Every time I want to eat I count carbs. Preparing my needle is now 2nd nature whenever I think of putting food in my mouth. At the moment my stomach is quite bruised because I’ve been getting sloppy with my technique and I’ve stopped looking. The needle hurts and I consider needling somewhere else for a while but can’t bear to move it to another area. The idea disgusts me. I do 4 units of insulin, stupidly forgetting I just finished a workout. So I decide after lunch I will veg on the couch and hopefully I won’t get a hypo.
1.00pm– Scratched myself accidentally on the arm. Use the blood to do a BGL test. My fingers are amazingly sore from testing lately (must be winter). I’ve been trying to move my testing sites around but my body just doesn’t want to bleed. Damn non-bleeding body. BGL 3.3. No hypo symptoms yet. If I wait another 10 minutes it will go down into the 2’s. Generally I am unable to even tell you my name at this level, so I pop a few jellybeans and raid my cupboards looking for yummy hypo food. Eat lots of stuff. Eeeep.
3.10pm– BGL check 10.2. Over-corrected my hypo. Shrug it off and do housework to bring my BGLs down.
6.45pm– BGL 6.0 before dinner. Yay! Eat chicken thingies (Yes, that is what I have named them) with vegies, including corn and potato, which both contain carbs. Too lazy to figure out carb amounts and they are the only carbs I am eating so I skip insulin again as we’re about to head to the cinemas anyway and I will have to do insulin then anyway. I hate hate hate needles and pretty much refuse to do more than the 4 I’m supposed to do each day (1 for long-acting, 1 each for breakfast, lunch and dinner). I’m such an awesome diabetic.
8.20pm– Movie about to start. Check BGLs 8.3. Inject myself with 7 units of insulin for an unknown quantity of carbs (which pretty much means I can’t be bothered trying to count. Honestly, why did I get the disease that involved maths AND needles? Somebody really really really hates me. A lot.). Actually, I can figure out the chocolate but popcorn just doesn’t work for me. I have tried and tried again to figure this out. Always high after, no matter what ratio I do for it. (And yes, both popcorn and chocolate (1 bar = 30g = 3 units). I’m Type 1, not Type 2. And as previously stated, I’m an awesome diabetic). Watch Men in Black III and have a few hours break where I forget I’m a diabetic.
10.15pm– Last check of the day as we leave cinemas. 9.2. At least it’s not the 15 I had last time I ate popcorn.

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