Diabetes Blog Week - Keep It To Yourself

Many of us share lots of aspects of our diabetes lives online for the world to see.  What are some of the aspects of diabetes that you choose to keep private from the internet?  Or from your family and friends?  Why is it important to keep it to yourself?  (This is not an attempt to get you out of your comfort zone.  There is no need to elaborate or tell personal stories related to these aspects.  Simply let us know what kinds of stories we will never hear you tell, and why you won't tell them.) (Thank you Scott E of Rolling in the D for this topic.)

Wow Scott came up with an extremely hard question for me to answer today as I don’t think there’s anything about diabetes that I haven’t or wouldn't share with the DOC. The anonymity of the internet makes it extremely easy for me to share without fear of consequences.

I do however keep things from my friends and family. I can’t even tell you why as I’m not sure. I didn't even realize that I was doing it until a few months ago. In February, Karen wrote this great post on what it feels like to have a low. It really resonated with me and I sent it to my husband and my mom. My mom called me as soon as she read it and told me that she had no idea that this is what happened when I had a low. I think it freaked her out quite a bit.

I’ve been thinking about why that was the first time I had sent something like that to my mom and I don’t have an answer. I don’t know if sending her stuff like that more often would help her or hurt her more. It definitely something that I will need to ease her into.

I’m probably freer with information with my husband as he’s right there. He sees the all-day highs and the all-day lows. He knows how frustrated I get when diabetes screws with my day or even when I manage to successfully maneuver through the idiosyncrasies of the disease. The only thing I probably don’t share with him is how often I cry when I’m frustrated.

As for friends, they probably know even less.

I guess what I've discovered in writing this post is that it’s really the emotional side of diabetes that I don’t share with people. I've always needed to process my emotions myself before sharing them with others. Since I received my diagnosis when I was in  my early 20’s and was living by myself, I guess I got used to dealing with this on my as well. Finding the DOC and reading about everyone else’s experiences help me deal. I may not be very vocal on twitter or the blogosphere but I’m there and I’m reading. Thanks for posting everyone!

Diabetes Blog Week - Mantras and More

Yesterday we opened up about how diabetes can bring us down. Today let’s share what gets us through a hard day.  Or more specifically, a hard diabetes day.  Is there something positive you tell yourself?  Are there mantras that you fall back on to get you through?  Is there something specific you do when your mood needs a boost?  Maybe we've done that and we can help others do it too? (Thanks to Meri of Our Diabetic Life for suggesting this topic.)

Wow this is an extremely hard topic for me. As I mentioned yesterday, I tend to put things out of my mind when I don’t want to deal with them. Don’t get me wrong, I know they exist. I’m not ignorant. I don’t put my head in the sand. I just tend to accept them and move on.

I had a really bad diabetes night on Monday. My BG before dinner was 5.6 mmol/L. I had hamburgers and salad for dinner so it wasn’t very carb heavy. Maybe 30g carbs for the bun. I always let my pump do my calculations for me using the wizard so I know it was right but somehow my BG ended up as 21.5 mmol/L. I think I was in denial cause at first I did a correction bolus using my wizard. Could also be because I’m cheap and I knew I didn’t have to change my pump until the next morning. I checked again an hour later and was at 22.6 mmol/L. I did another correction. Finally 30 minutes later I realised that I was going to have to change my site. The 24.7 mmol/L glaring at me wouldn’t let me ignore it any longer. By this time it was 11pm and I knew I couldn’t go to sleep until I saw the numbers drop. Thankfully about an hour later, it had gone down to 15.5 mmol/L and I knew I was a going to be ok.

The whole time I was going through this I tried exercising. I’ve recently started wearing a pedometer and I had to get some more steps in anyway so I decided to jog around my room. It didn’t work at all. Why is apparent now as it was a bad site but still very frustrating in the moment.

So I guess my way of coping is to try all avenues until I finally accept the inevitable. Once I accept, I’m lucky in that I can forget about it and move onto the next challenge. No magic words here. Just the realisation that nothing lasts forever.

In terms of needing a boost for everything else, nothing brings me up like this guy:

Diabetes Blog Week - What Brings You Down

May is Mental Health Month so now seems like a great time to explore the emotional side of living with, or caring for someone with, diabetes. What things can make dealing with diabetes an emotional issue for you and / or your loved one, and how do you cope? (Thanks go out to Scott of Strangely Diabetic for coordinating this topic.)

This post is actually inspired by one that Rick wrote on Monday at TuDiabetes.

It doesn’t matter if I’m happy, sad or angry; emotions always come out of me in the form of tears. As I was reading Rick’s post yesterday (I’m super behind on reading all the DBlog Week posts) I couldn’t help but break down. I don’t think I ever realised before how angry I am that I have diabetes.

I’ve heard a lot lately on how depression and diabetes go hand and hand together. It’s never been an issue that has affected me. I’ve had a lot of people in my life that have struggled with depression and dealt with it either through therapy or medication or both. I’m so glad that those options are available for people that need them. It’s just never been an issue I’ve had to deal with. Most of the time I’m a regular, happy person. I’m just angry.

Before I do anything, my first thought is how it will affect my BG’s especially with all of the big moments. When my husband and I got married, I had to figure out how I was going to give myself a shot of insulin (I was still on MDI) through my wedding dress. I hadn’t experimented on giving myself injections other than my stomach, mostly because I didn’t realise it was possible. I’m angry that my diabetic team at the time didn’t tell me about it. If they didn’t know, why not? They’re supposed to be the experts. Why didn’t they take the time to educate themselves?

When we started thinking about having a baby, not only did I have to educate myself on what having a baby meant but I also had to research what would happen to my diabetes and because I have diabetes, what would happen to the baby. When I got pregnant, my every thought went into “how will this affect the baby?” I’m angry that I couldn’t just be excited that I was pregnant. Instead I spent the whole 9 months wondering and worrying if everything I did was hurting the baby.

I’ve blogged before about my son’s heart issues when he was born. I’m angry that my first thought when I learned that he had ASD and VSD was that it was my fault. Even though the Doctor said that this was not genetic, that it occurs by chance and with no clear reason why it occurs, I was angry that my diabetes could have been the cause. I thank the powers that be everyday that he is a healthy average boy with a tremendous amount of energy and is able to run everywhere he goes. But I’m angry that it’s still a possibility that I caused it in the first place.

I am so angry that as soon as my 2 year old son drinks a higher than normal amount of water, I have to check his BG immediately. My first thought is always going to be “is it diabetes?” It’s gotten so bad that as soon as he sees me advancing on him with my lancet in hand, he runs away from me. He already knows to associate it with pain.

I’m not depressed or sad that I have diabetes. I’m angry.

The second part of this question topic is “How do you cope?” Quite frankly the only thing I can do is try to move on. All stewing about it does it hurt me.

#DBlogCheck - and other news

I recently just found out about this great idea by Chris at a Consequence of Hypoglycemia. On July 22, 2013 (today) you should post a comment on every blog you read to let bloggers know that you were there. If you don’t have anything specific to say than just say “Check!”. I tend to lurk quite a lot on other blogs but love reading them so this gives reminds me that bloggers really appreciate knowing that others are reading their blogs.

Now onto my news….As usual it’s been extremely crazy around here.

• My mom has been planning on moving out here for quite some time and has now made the move. She drove out from Montreal a couple of weeks ago after selling her house and within two days of getting here had put in an offer on a great house 15 min from my place. She takes possession on August 1st and should be completely moved in by the 15th. I love having her so close!
• After 16 months, I think I’m finally getting this motherhood thing down. Which is great as I have been neglecting my crafting like crazy. I’ve finally picked out a quilt pattern for Connor and will be heading tonight to pick out some fabrics. I can’t wait to get started. I’ll be posting pics of the finished product so stay tuned.
• My BG’s for the last 24hours have been extremely weird. I changed my set yesterday morning at 9am and my BG was 8.5. It then rose to 13.8 at noon. 9.7 at 2:30. 5.9 at 5:30. 5.2 at 7:20. 11.6 at 10pm and at 11:30pm it was 9.3. When I woke up this morning it was 16.4 and now it’s 20.1. I’ve been taking some serious correction blouses but they don’t seem to be getting them down. I have a feeling I have a bad site but I’m so reluctant to change it was my BG’s around dinner were fabulous. I think I’ll wait until lunch and see if I can get it in the normal range. I hate wasting a new set.
• There are so many wonderful things happening in the city right now and I can’t wait to get out and participate. I’ll try to post a little more frequently for the rest of the summer so that I can share it all with you. Have a great day!

Road Trip

Good Morning Father, I have sinned. It’s been three weeks since my last confession..…or blog post. Or more accurately about 6 weeks since I’ve written anything of substance. Work has been extremely ridiculous since I got back from vacation so I haven’t had as much free time as I needed to sit down and finally write a post.

On May 25th, my husband and I took our son and drove down to Omaha for a family reunion. It takes about 25 hours to drive there so we ended up stopping our first night in Great Falls, Montana and our second night in Rapid City, South Dakota. We’ve taken the trip before and had planned to spend a couple of days in Rapid City doing touristy stuff but it was raining the whole way down so we decided to push on and get to Omaha as quickly as possible. We got there on May 27th.

Maps.google.com

If any of you are thinking of spending three days in a car with a 15 month old, don’t. It was not pleasant. We specifically chose hotels that had pools so that we could get as much energy used up as possible before we headed out the next day. It worked for the first day. Unfortunately when we got to Rapid City, Connor had somehow gotten the flu. Thankfully we had already decided to leave the next day as I really pity the poor cleaning crew that had to deal with our room. We used a lot of towels. Thankfully Connor seemed ok the next morning so we headed out as planned and got to Omaha late afternoon.

By the next morning, my husband and father-in-law had come down with the flu as well. Followed the next day by my sister-in-law and her daughter. The worst parts of it only seemed to last for about 24 hours and most of the people were feeling a lot better by Friday.

Most of the week we spent in Omaha was great. We made it to the Henry Doorly Zoo, the botanical gardens, the children’s museum, and to a photographer to get some great family photos.

Having learned from our trip on the way down, we decided to stop by 2 or 3 pm everyday so that Connor could get a lot of exercise in. This made the trip home four days. We finally rolled back into Edmonton on June 6th. While we love road trips, I think we will definitely be flying the next time we head down. 3-4 days in a car son was just a little too much for our son. I think we’ll keep road trips to less than a day away.

As for the Diabetes front, my BG’s were actually amazing. It was a little shocking actually considering we ate out almost the entire trip. I’m talking about McDonald’s, Culver’s (mmmmm…butter buns), pizza ranch, you name it, if it was bad for you we probably ate there. I became very familiar with my dual wave feature on my pump and apparently am now super pro. Yay Me! We also did a ton of walking though as you can probably tell from all the activities above. I’m betting that had some to do with it. It just goes to show that exercise really does stabilize your BG’s. Now I just need to figure out how to add in more activities to my everyday life.

Diabetes Blog Week – Memories

Today we’re going to share our most memorable diabetes day. You can take this anywhere.... your or your loved one's diagnosis, a bad low, a bad high, a big success, any day that you’d like to share.

In my almost 10 years of being a diabetic, I have only had one day that caused me to leave work due to high blood sugars and it happened about a month ago.

As you can see from the above table, I was in the high teens and twenties for most of the day. What's weird about it is that this isn't a completely unusual day for me. It's not like I have them all of the time but it's nothing I haven't experienced before. What made it really memorable for me was how I felt. I probably shouldn't have gone to work that morning as it started as soon as I woke up but never having felt this way before, I thought it was just a weird blip. I was nauseous, sluggish, headachy (Love making up new words ;-) and pasty. Nothing out of the ordinary for high BG's but just intense. I've never really had an issue with ketones before (not that I really tested...oops) but I checked them a few times this day and there were absolutely none present. I probably should have reduced my carb intake but would that have fixed the issue? After lunch I couldn't take it anymore and went home. I changed my infusion site, took some Tylenol, had a nap, and then took a walk. Thankfully things started to even out by 8pm so I was able to go to sleep with a reasonable number. I have no idea what ended up fixing it. I could have been the site change but I was only on my second day. It could have been the Tylenol, maybe I had a minor fever. It could have been the walk. Maybe it was bad insulin. I drank about 7 - 8 litres of water that day, was that what fixed it? Who knows.  

This was just one of those days that I really hated Diabetes