Now Hiring: Management Positions Open
Sitting outside of the grocery store yesterday, I put a blood sample on my meter and waited for the result. 70mg/dL. Not technically low – yet. But I had tested because I had that “I’m on my way down” type of feeling. I was sans CGM thanks to a bum sensor I had removed the night before, so the snapshot of my glucose was all I had to go on.
Now I have a dilemma. I’m at the grocery store about to buy food for supper, and I don’t want to eat something and “ruin my dinner.” I’m also not that low, but I intuition tells me I’m headed there. I have a GU pack and three stale sugar packets in my car console. The GU pack has 18 grams of carbohydrate – a little too much for a low but not so much it would really throw me overboard. And I’m not eating the sugar packets (throw those out Lex, come ON! Its like a stale security blanket to me – I might need them one day).
To treat the low or not treat the low – that is my question. I erred on the side of safety and popped the GU pack.
Diabetes is full of these “borderline”/”perhaps”/”I might”/”what if?” scenarios. You get faced with a foreign meal/number on the screen/new exercise/weird feeling in the middle of the night, and you’re forced to make a management decision that has the potential to affect the next several hours of your life. People with diabetes do this every day – several times a day in fact – for their entire lives. Diabetes is a constant art of maintaining a balance that other people’s bodies do as automatically as breathing. Keep the numbers between 80 and 120mg/dL – seems easy enough right?
Except that everything affects your blood sugar. EVERYTHING. Exercise. Not enough exercise. Carbs, too few and too many. If you’re sick, if you’re sleepy, if you’re stressed, if you’ve so much as sneezed, it’s likely your blood sugar will change. If ONLY diabetes was as easy as counting the carbs and dialing in the insulin. Every time I hear someone tell a story about their friend/coworker/grandpa with diabetes that goes: “I saw his meter, it was in the 300s – I think he doesn’t take care of himself” I cringe. I’ve had many of those moments, of those 300s at the dinner table full of people who want to know “What are you?” before they grimace in horror at the number you reveal. And most of the time, those numbers aren’t the result of my poor math skills or shameful self-indulgence. They’re what it means to have diabetes. Unpredictable, ever-changing, and permanent. That’s the nature of diabetes.
With each finger stick and CGM trend line, people with diabetes are managing systems that are only understood by the most sophisticated machine on this planet (that would be the human body folks. Stop looking at your iPhone). Mistakes, miscalculations, and plain old out-of-left-field surprises are inevitable. So we test, we correct, we move on.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
I know!! I hate that - I think it makes them feel good to be the one checking on you - later they can say “I checked on that guy with diabetes all night - probably saved his life!” Uggh. I hate that one. I had this experience a few months ago, and I was sitting is a wedged in seat at a small table, near the wall, so it was hard for me to get out. I got low after dinner thanks to a faulty carb count on my part, and I needed some juice. I said I was low and a friend of mine said, “do you want me to go get a juice from the bar?” Of course I said yes, given where I was sitting - it was hard for me to get out. Later she says “I’ve never seen you so low that I had to go get a juice for you! That was scary!” Oh. Please. You’ve gotta be kidding. GRrrrr.
ahh the life of a diabetic. never a dull moment. i try to desensitize myself to diabetic comments, especially from strangers/not so close friends. after all, there is tons of misinformation out there. it’s a constant struggle, but at the end of the day, all we can do is:
“we test, we correct, we move on.”
well said, alexis
Yes, it always sucks when people who don’t understand not only want to know what your blood sugar is, but also want to tell you what it means.
Lately I’ve had a few incidents where people will see me eating something and think they are very clever because they figured out I had a low blood sugar.
“Yes, you’re a genius. I did just pour myself a juice because I was low. Congratulations.”
“No, you don’t need to keep checking on me the rest of the night, asking me if I feel better.”