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: