Lows. Nothing cool about ’em.
When I think about the laundry list of items that are so annoying about diabetes, I have to say that lows top my list. There’s really nothing good about them, except that they’re usually gone 15 minutes after treating them. And that you’re given license to indulge in a sweet treat - IF you can get to one. If I had Haagen Daz ice cream at the ready for every one of my lows, I’d probably actually enjoy them a little more - but I’m usually choking down stale licorice from my glove compartment for my lows, and there’s no time to find an ice cream store. But I digress. Back to why lows royally suck so much.
Lows are always inconvenient, because there’s NEVER a good time to stop everything you’re doing and fix a damn low. I’d always rather be sleeping/working/exercising/lounging/dancing than stopping whatever I’m doing to treat a low. But being the acute emergency situation they are, you don’t really get a choice. Lows demand attention, and fast. They’re like a yipping chihuahua that won’t shut up until you give it a biscuit…except they’re more like a sweaty, dizzy, confusing chihuahua…on second thought that analogy doesn’t make any sense at all…but you get the point.
Because so they’re so doggone uncomfortable and at times, scary, lows also contribute to a large amount of highs. We’ve all over-corrected a low only to end up sky high, ragefully bolusing to fix it…and then ending up maddeningly low again. That roller coaster of highs and lows is one of the most frustrating things about diabetes - it’s no wonder that the first thing my endo does when we sit down to look at my log book is to try and reduce any lows I’m having. They ruin everything else, so getting rid of lows is a good way to make pretty much everything better.
Lows also seem to directly contribute to the complicated feelings many of us Type 1s have about food. You have to eat when you’re low - even if it’s directly after Thanksgiving dinner and you’re low because you bolused too much for your massive meal. And if you’re like me, you have a tendency to want to treat yourself when you get a particularly crappy low or have one at a particularly inopportune time,which then leads you to the later high as noted before (see photo above: that’s a Starbucks Cake Pop, which I pulled over and nabbed last week when I felt myself dropping while rushing to an appointment that I was obviously then late for. And since those bad boys have 22 grams of carbs, I rebounded to over 200mg/dL a few hours later. Totally my own fault but it still totally pisses me off). Carbs are this six-headed goblin we’re trying to control all day, and then you get a low and you have to gobble down the very thing that gives you grief the other 99% of the day. In this way of making us need the very thing we’re supposed to avoid, lows contribute to disordered eating patterns that some of us folks with diabetes have. It’s a love-hate relationship with those carbs, and lows are like an evil, fog-inducing monkey wrench in that relationship.
There’s no doubt about it that most things about diabetes aren’t exactly awesome, but lows, you get my vote for most annoying. There’s no trophy for winning, in case you were wondering…
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Comments
Try the sugar tablets like Dex4’s. I use them and they give you an exact dose of glucose that works way quicker than any food. I think for a 3-4mmol/L its usually 4 of them or 16g CH and 5 of them for less than 3.
Then have a small snack. This will get your BS up faster and prevent the dreaded post low highs.
Yuck! I just uploaded sugars today because I am SO FRUSTRATED! My sugar got down to 29 at a football game this weekend, and the next day it was low all day, then BAM! high as all get out. That mixed in with hormonal changes increasing insulin resistance as the month goes on. Sucks! My doctor told me a lot of the madness was the ping pong effect of over-correcting highs and lows, one causing the other. Diabetes is extra annoying if you are a perfectionist. 🙁