You Can't Rely On Anything!

I made a huge mistake one night, at least I think I did.

I'm used to having hypo's. They're not that frequent anymore but when they do happen it doesn't bother me as much as it used to when I was first diagnosed about 4 months or so ago. This, however, was before I woke up in the night with quite a severe one.

My blood sugar reading before bed was 8.8, which is actually quite high for me at that time on a weeknight. I had my normal Lantus (long acting insulin) dose of 16 and went to bed without supper (which I never eat). The only other thing worth mentioning was that I'd started a new pen, with the previous one running empty the night before. So, just an average night, nothing different, nothing out of the ordinary...

I woke up feeling extremely restless and, after around 10 mins, I decided to get out of bed and see what the problem was. Soon after sitting up I knew that I was having a hypo. All of the symptoms were there; the hand shakes, fingers tingling, an almost light-headed feeling (it's quite hard to describe) and above all, mild panic.

I toppled out of bed to reach my blood monitor, making quite a thud as I scrambled across my room. I gave myself the quickest blood sugar test possible.

 It came back at 1.8.

I have no idea how far away this is from a seizure or a full pass out but it didn't feel so far away. I know many T1 Diabetics will have had readings below that (I think) but it scared the s**t out of me!
I had a tablet, some Lucozade and whatever snacks I could find in my room, after around 5 mins I felt fine again like nothing had happened.

At my next regular checkup at the hospital I asked what could have caused the very sudden drop in blood glucose. I explained everything that happened and what I'd eaten throughout the day and what I'd been doing leading up to going to bed. At first they suggested that I might have injected myself with the wrong pen, which, if true, would've been quite comical. That wasn't the case as my other pen (the fast acting insulin) wasn't even in the same room for the very purpose of not accidentally injecting the wrong one.

They then suggested that the pen that I used may have been faulty. I'd heard that pen's have been know on occasion to be faulty, but only that they don't inject enough insulin, so more of a mechanical fault than a chemical fault. They also suggested that I may have injected myself straight into muscle rather then fat, which even if true wouldn't really have caused such a dramatic decrease.

So, no questions answered and no apparent reason for almost passing out, which is worrying. That particular pen found itself hurtling towards an open coal fire the next night. There was no way, faulty or not, that I was going to risk it again with that one. Imagine if my bg before injecting had been my normal 6 or 7, I may have had a seizure before waking up, causing all sorts of problems, especially in the morning when I wouldn't have turned up for work!

The lesson learnt here is that you cannot take things for granted, especially the things that you rely on to keep your health!


Loui

A Bit of Much Needed Exercise...

Now I'm not really one to go on about exercise and how fit and healthy I am. This is mainly because I'm not really fit, I'm certainly not healthy, and I don't agree with the government that everyone should exercise for a certain amount of time every week. People who seem to love making sure that you know how fit they are really get my irish up. Anyway before I go off on a tangent...

I used to go running fairly regularly, usually around 2 or 3 times a week depending on how busy I was. Then the excuses became more frequent and I'd only end up out maybe once every fortnight. Then I became ill and any form of exercise dropped way down the priority list. After a month or so of mild recuperation Christmas came, followed by work and before I knew it February was here and I hadn't been out for about 4 months.

One main reason other than the above was that I'd been slightly afraid of what would happen if I went out and hadn't managed my sugar levels properly. I've had hypo's just carrying things around with very little exertion so a run of a few miles seemed far more daunting than it should be. The main risk being that where I live there aren't many people around so If I did have a severe hypo (and also ran out of energy supplements) then I wouldn't have enough energy to walk the distance home and, very worst case scenario, pass out and wouldn't likely be found for some time.

This, of course, was me over-thinking the whole situation as usual. I decided to look at some diabetic forums online to see if I could find a starting point and any advice. Turns out, as I guessed, that everyone does it in their own way and that it's more trial and error than anything else. Who'd have thought?

In the end I went out with a small rucksack, took my phone with me, plus my blood monitor (so I could check it half way through) and a bottle of Lucozade. I was still quite worried as I didn't want a hypo so far from anyone and I wasn't sure how much energy my body actually uses when running.

                                The running ground...

The run went well but needless to say I was shattered when I got home, more than I thought I would be. Then the expected, somewhat overdue, hypo hit me. It wasn't a particularly bad one (my bg was 2.9) but the fact that I was physically exhausted certainly didn't help matters. It took me the rest of the day to recover. I was coughing, occasionally shaking (not actually sure why) and my chest felt like it was going to explode.

Why bother? You might ask. Why would bother going for a run if I knew I'd come back feeling quite ill?

Well it's pretty simple. It feels great to be out in the open air, actually feeling your body working (feel the burn!). There's also the feeling of being completely alone with your thoughts, giving you time to sort things out in your head, all whilst you're very slowly becoming slightly healthier. Well, hopefully anyway.

Loui

This Must Be the Place...

By now you've probably realised that I don't do short posts, or particularly optimistic ones, but you're in for a treat today!

Have you ever had that feeling of being really settled in a place? Or where you feel perfectly at ease with your surroundings and the people around you?

No neither have I.

However, the possibility of having that feeling at some point pleases me. And actually makes me feel ever so slightly optimistic about the future. I'd even go so far as to say that it makes me feel happy. There are people  out there that live a life of optimism and (seemingly) constant happiness, unable to see the cloud on the horizon. I don't envy these people, I love them. These people live life knowing that tomorrow is another day and that things can always be worse. They are grateful for what they have, no matter how much or little, and carry around with them a somewhat cheery disposition. These people are the reason this mixed up little island stays afloat!

Anyway back to my original point. At some point we must all feel as though we truly belong somewhere, some of us will already be in that place whereas some of us are waiting (or hoping) for it to appear. This might not be a physical place, it could simply just be time spent with another person. I suppose everyone is different. I don't often feel this optimistic so I thought I'd better write it down!

I'm done.


Loui

Diabetes Mellitus Type 1 Pt.1

Therapy?

Insulin therapy they call it, them folk at the hospital. How they can use the word therapy I don't know, because it certainly isn't what I would consider therapy.


I may have already mentioned this in earlier posts but the worst part of having diabetes is that it's incredibly inconvenient more than anything else. The biggest inconvenience is having to inject myself just before every proper meal that I have. The needles I use are only 5mm long and so aren't very intimidating to look at. I don't use a syringe, (I won't go into detail about the different between needles and syringes) but I use what looks like a pen, which is pre-filled with Insulin that I attach a new needle to everytime I inject. I suppose I could use the same needle more than once as there's only me that uses it and it's the same 'drug' that goes through it, but at the moment I'm trying to be a good patient and do exactly as I'm told. This will no doubt change.

I use two types of pens. One pen I use before every meal and carry with me, like my blood monitor, 24/7. It's more important to me than my phone, my house keys, even my wallet. If I were to go out without it, which I haven't yet, I would have to avoid eating or drinking most things until I got back. It is very fast acting so I can take it around 10 mins before a meal (though I usually inject when the meal is in front of me) and it'll do it's job and counteract whatever I'm about to eat.

 

 

                                          4 times a day...

 

Dosage

The pen has a dial on it so that I can adjust my dosage depending on a) the size of the meal and b) the amount of carbohydrates and sugar in the meal; this is the tricky part.

 When you buy food it will usually tell you what it contains in terms of ingredients, carbs, and protein etc. This is good for me when calculating what dosage to have because I know pretty much exactly what is in the meal. Like anything, after trial and error I have a good idea of how much to take with meals that I've had more than once. However, when eating out it's a whole different game. Even if it's a meal that I have often at home it will contain different ingredients (which 99% of menu's won't list) and different portions. This really is a guessing game that I'll get better at through time. You can understand a diabetics problem here?

I use a different pen just before I go to bed, or at around 12-1am if I'm out and still awake. This is a slow acting pen which, I have no idea how, keeps my blood relatively level throughout the day.

 If I have too high a dosage then I'll have a hypo (serious, and possible risk of passing out) or if I don't have enough then my blood will be high (not immediately serious, but if consistently high over months/years leads to complications like foot amputation or heart disease, and after a couple of days of being very high, can lead to a coma).

If you can imagine having to jab yourself with a needle before every meal, without fail, then you're on the same page. (I imagine that statement could come across as me feeling sorry for myself, but I don't, it's just the easiest way of describing how inconvenient it is.)

I inject myself in different places around the stomach at meal times, and with a different pen and type of insulin in my thighs just before bed. The injections don't generally hurt, in fact a lot of the time I don't feel them at all. However there are odd times when it is very painful and I usually pull the needle out and try again in a different area. Injecting twice rather than once is a lot more difficult for some reason and I always struggle with it. It sounds like quite an effort and something that must be hard to get used to but the truth is, like they told me in hospital, I have no choice but to get used to it. There's no way around it, I have to inject myself 4 times a day for the rest of my life in order to, without sounding overly dramatic and serious, stay alive.

There are other complications of course, which will probably follow at some point. I realise that this post is quite clinical/to the point but I'm afraid it's the only way I could get it out!

At the end of the day Diabetes is a pain in the f***ing ass!


Loui