Rollercoasters Bring More than Fear

This is a post I've been working on for a while...and despite that, I ask for your patience with the ungraceful writing. I just want to get this out. Shout. Shout. Shout it all out. Right?

I'm terrified of heights. Everyone wonders how I rock climb and enjoy the big metal rides of steel. Once I test my climbing anchors with a full lap, understand the safety mechanisms, and watch someone do it, the fear melts away like butter. Monkey see, Monkey do. (Goes very well with "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." but I digress...)

When the rollercoaster changes in unexpected ways and my safety mechanisms don't work, I get very upset. When I was younger, I'd be able to tell a low was coming when I got to 75 mg/dl just by a little nudging feeling inside me with some light shaking and perspiring. In the last two years, I've become very dependent on my robotic paraphenalia aka my Dexcom Continuous Glucose Monitor aka Eggy.

This week I had a monster low. Eggy was unhelpful, because it was reading confuzzled with the ??? staring back at me. I didn't feel it. I didn't see it. I didn't hear it, taste it, or smell it. I didn't realize it at all until I stabbed my finger before leaving my apt to drive into school (PSA for the day: Always test before you drive). It. This crazed monster of the low bloodsugar variety. Hypoglycemia. The thing that makes every cell in my body silently scream without hope for a solution.

The signs change. The feelings. The nudges.

It started with some lethargy. A bout of nasty nasty depression question whether or not grad school was the wrong choice for me. Ensuing panic. Freezing cold.

All I knew was that I felt wrong. I felt unlike myself but I couldn't do anything about it. I felt this way (at varying levels) for at least 4 hours. I put my to-do-list on hold and seriously questioned one of the largest undertakings I've committed myself to accomplish. Graduate school is not something to undertake lightly kids. No tears. No screaming. No sweat. Just a quiet but persistent inquisition. I honestly believed I should just give up on everything I spent more than a third of my life on for a solid few hours.

I've come to expect lethargy and anger with a high. Not with a low. Lows are supposed to be urgent. Unseasonably warm. Loud. Metallic tasting. Making the energy inside me feel like I'm going to explode. like every little blood cell is bouncing off my capillaries vibrating and hunting for the last molecule of glucose.

Dear diabetes, it's not cool when you change the rules. It's not cool when you make me wonder if I'm me first or you first. It's not cool when I begin to question my sanity. It's not cool when I have to scrutinize my emotions and decisions for the lingering presence of sugar effects. Sometimes, I want my body to belong wholly to me and not to the monsters created by the absence of a single hormone: Insulin. Hear me RAWR. I won't let you take over my life like this.

Things My Blood Sugar Should Not Equal

1. My age
2. Number of hours in the day
3. Almost the speed limit in school zones
4. A TV show staring Kiefer Sutherland
5. Total number of ribs in the human body
6. The number of carats in pure gold
7. Yotta
8. The atomic number of chromium
9. Players on the field in a Canadian football game
10. Total number of pieces in a game of Checkers

And yet, this surprised me today:

After a few double takes, I rechecked 4 times with two meters: 28, 26, 29, 25.

Of course, this occurred in the two hours I was waiting before calibrating Eggy. No symptoms. I felt a little funny but wasn't suspecting a low at all. No shaking until 20 minutes later when treated with a few gulps of orange juice. Oh diabetes, you get stranger and stranger everyday.

Wordless Wednesday: Birthday by the Pictures

Thank you to everyone who made yesterday an awesome kick off to the next (fantastic) year of my life!

Technology Failure

My poor little laptop is officially dead. It croaked its last breath on Tuesday night at 8:16pm. I stuffed it into a well packed box and shipped it back to the company yesterday afternoon. Now, I have to wait 4-6 business days for it to return...

In the meantime, I have all these little snippets of posts waiting to be written into full fledged awesome stories. I guess I'll just keep writing myself little notes until I can find some time (and technology) to put them together.

Keep on holding steady.

Vacations, Bad Luck, & Emergency Baking

It's weeks like these that make me feel like Diabetes isn't going to kill me. Stress on the other hand...

I apologize for the impromptu hiatus in blog posts. I'm a little disappointed for not making a goal I set to post regularly. Honestly, I'm burnt out on responsibilities at the moment. I needed to take a real break from everything for a little while, which was amazing while that feeling lasted (and unfortunately it was extremely short lived).

So what have I been doing? I took the week after Christmas to sleep out the exhaustion from my first semester and the crazy holiday/semester-end celebrations. There was quite a bit of driving around. I think I spent 14 hrs in a car over a 48 hr span of time. Every day that week began with many hours of sleep and a few enjoyable hours on the couch watching bad television (because really, it's the only kind).

Unluckily, my laptop crashed the day after I returned to New Jersey after only functioning for about 45 minutes. It was a serious blue screen of death followed by a "I won't boot regardless of how nicely you ask me" tantrum. Two system restores, many phone calls to HP tech repair, and 48 hours later my laptop was mildly functional. I just recently (as in the last few hours) installed Windows 7 and restored its functionality (read: it's no longer a very expensive paperweight).

This past Saturday, I managed to have my cell phone and One Touch Ultralink meter lost (and probably now stolen) in a public restroom. That lead to a very unpleasant 24 hours where I was relying very heavily on my continuous glucose monitor (EGGY TO THE RESCUE!). Needless to say, I have had multiple moments of undue stress, unclear thinking, and reckless panic. I still haven't slept to make up for all of it.

It proved to be a fairly (but not insanely) expensive mistake. I bought a new phone from AT&T and a One Touch mini from my favorite pharmacy. To try and unwind a little, I googled a quick recipe for my favorite (and mildly famous) chocolate chip cheesecake cookies since all my recipes are hiding in the backed up files on my external hard drive somewhere. Whipped up a batch as speedily as I could. I'm all sorts of discombobulated still. But indeed a delivered pizza and baked goods do ease large quantities of stress, in case you thought otherwise.

I'm sure you'll see upcoming posts that were intended for well before their actual post date. I hope they haven't hit their expiration dates.

Sleeping... Or So I Hoped

It's funny for me to think about when I was in college and managed to fall asleep in all the strangest places at all the strangest times. I had (have?) a habit of running myself ragged, doing everything I possibly could, before my body would just decide naptime was required and I would be out like a light. (bonus story at the end!)

To this day, I'm still a pretty heavy sleeper. Except when the Diabetes Dragon exacts it's toll.

I remember being a teenager and having my endocrinologist ask me if I ever woke up in the middle of the night for water or to use the bathroom. Most often the answer was no. Thinking about it now, I always wondered why they never asked, "Do you ever wake up in a sweat?" or "Do you ever just sit up in bed?" Living with diabetes brings about a lot of good things like healthier eating and more attention to lifestyle choices, but with sleep, I wish I didn't have it. Luckily for me, I always woke up anxious or trembling when my blood sugar was dropping (usually at the 40s or 50s, but at least I'd know) [easily my mom's biggest fear]. In terms of high readings, most often I wake up groggy and dehydrated when I get to about 250 mg/dl.

The reason I bring this up today is because today I experienced random awakeness for the first time that wasn't D related. No cold sweats. No shaking. No anxiety. No dying for a liter of water. Just AWAKE. My body never ceases to amaze me. Why am I awake before 10am in the middle of my vacation? Because I think I've trained myself on 6 to 8 hours of sleep. I've been working on getting more sleep all summer and now it comes full circle.

I was overcome with this wave of exhaustion at about 11pm last night. Passed out on the couch kind of exhaustion. I woke up to 5am on my cell phone. I don't see 5am often for a reason. We're not friends. I understand doing this once school starts, but really, I'm trying to savor the last few weeks of freedom from craziness. On the upside, the internet always has something for me to do to keep occupied. On the downside, I really just want to close my eyes for a few more minutes of zzzs and can't.

Bonus story: When I was a sophomore, I went over to my friend's apartment to study for an organic chemistry exam we had coming up. We were sitting on the couch and flipping through our books, when her roommate came out of her room to ask my friend something quickly. I think they were talking for maybe 2 minutes. My friend turned back to me and I was out like a light right there on the couch next to her with my textbook in my lap. Woke up 2 hours later, very very confused.

Feel It Coming

Funny tidbit: Blogger only let's me update html post from my phone. Weird but I'm just happy to be writing despite no "real" broadband internet til Friday.

Anyways! Today is day one of unpacking into my new place. Let's just say that I'd rather be anywhere else doing anything else. So I kinda chalked up my lack of motivation to distaste for the task instead of low blood sugar.

Normally, I'm as bright eyed and bushy tailed as everyone else (and sometimes more so). Today, I experienced that slow, losing steam at the cracks sort of feeling. Arms that felt like lead made me think that maybe I just needed to relax for a few minutes on my bed and troll the web for something exciting to read. Somewhere, the better half of my conscience said, "It could be a falling number." But I looked at my CGM and saw a flat arrow at about 90 and decided it really was just too much moving stuff around.

Gradually, I became more and more tired, like a gradual fog settling in on the folds of my brains. I said to myself, "This kind of feels like a mild low. I should test. Where's my meter?" That notion was immediately battled by my inner child with a very whiney (sans cheese), "I don't want to. Please don't make me get up. I'm comfy."

That should've been my sign. But no. I kept reading and putzing. Meandering from site to site until I got really sleepy and suddenly Eggy buzzed loudly in my ear. 52 and slanty down arrow. Got up and tested to find a 49 waiting for me. I actually ate 6 glucose tabs (21g), set an alarm for 15 minutes for the recheck, and started to wait for that feeling of preparedness to come back.

Instead, I started zoning out while thinking of bookshelves and grocery lists. Luckily, I set a 15 minute timer on my phone because apparently I fell asleep on my comfy little airbed otherwise I would've missed the second reading of 49 on my little black OneTouch Mini.

I worry about my meter and my sanity when I see the same number. I always question myself as to whether I really ate those glucose tabs or whether that was low bg hazy delirium. And if it's a high, I ask myself, "Did I really push the ACT button?" and immediately pull out my pump to check the last bolus. The worst cases are late at night but sometimes it happens between meals and really freaks me out, because I know my body. I know there's no way my sugar levels have been at a constant for 4 or 5 hours after eating sometime. Is there such as thing as diabetes coincidences? Or does my meter just have an affinity that day for that particular number? This post makes me think that might just be a possibility.