Tag Archives: blood glucose

Hating the highs.

March 4, 2013 – 12:28 pm

All things being equal, yesterday was a pretty good day. Only things were not all equal… diabetes doesn’t play that way. Okay, well, maybe it wasn’t just the diabetes. Let me explain:

We woke up early (for a Sunday, anyway) at about 6:00 a.m. When I reached the kitchen, I did the normal stuff… make coffee, let the dog out, feed the dog and cat, and check my BG: 81 mg/dL. Great start to the day, right?

I promised to take The Great Spousal Unit over to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge near Cambridge, Maryland on Sunday. So after breakfast, we took off for Maryland’s Eastern Shore– a little over 2 hours away by car. By the time we were nearly there, we stopped for gas and I also needed to make a pit stop (badly). I should have guessed something was going on.

So we go off to the refuge, and it’s beautiful even though we didn’t see much compared to most trips there. After we finished, I decided to make a quick side trip over a public road that goes right through the middle of the preserve. It was there that Maureen spotted the only bald eagle that we saw all day. Wish I had a photo, but he flew away before I could snap it off. After that, and an equally quick sighting of an osprey, we headed off to Cambridge for a late lunch.

Again, I really had to go, but I didn’t think too much of it because I knew where my BG was in the morning, I knew what I didn’t overdo breakfast, and I bloused accordingly. Also, my infusion set had already been in for going on four days, and it had been working well. It was surprising when I checked just before lunch and found a 237 mg/dL on my meter.

Okay, I’m frustrated, but again, I bloused accordingly. I made sure I would be good by about 5 o’clock at the latest. Wroooong.

We took our time coming home, and the way back over the Bay Bridge, through Annapolis, and up to Baltimore wound up taking about 3 hours. When we arrived home (and after I ducked into the bathroom), I checked my glucose again: 249 mg/dL.

Now I’m mad. I almost never have a consistently high day like this. I’m ready to bolus the living daylights out of anything that moves. But I regained my composure and decided to change my infusion site instead. After changing, and to be sure I’m getting all of my bolus this time, I decided to do an injection to cover where my BG was sitting, plus the very limited amount of carbs I was ingesting at what was really more of a grazing than dinner. At this point, I’m absolutely sure that everything will be fine, even with (or especially because of) a new infusion set. Wanna guess how that came out?

I wait until 8:00 to check, and whaddyaknow? I’ve hit a new high for the day! 331 mg/dL. This is where the term “rage blousing” comes from. If it weren’t so late in the day by now, I probably would have rage bloused my behind off. Instead, I decide to do two more things.

One was to do another injection, right away. I figured this still had to be my best option to bring my glucose down.

The other thing I did was something I should have done much earlier in the day. Instead, I waited until I tested again at around 10:30, and saw 348 mg/dL on the meter. When I changed my infusion site earlier, I did not change my reservoir. I had about 100 or so units left in there, and I didn’t want to just toss all that insulin into the trash. So I changed my site and hooked up the old reservoir. But by now I’m thinking, maybe the insulin is bad somehow. I don’t know how this happens… I can’t remember it ever happening before. But, of course, now I’m ready to try anything, so I filled a new reservoir and hooked it up. I know this isn’t how you’re supposed to do these things, but hey, sometimes things don’t go according to plan. Once this was complete, I had pretty much given up, and I went to bed.

And gloriosky, when I woke up this morning, I was right back at 81 mg/dL all over again. Fiiiinnnnaaalllly. Hmmm…. Bad insulin. Who would’ve thunk it? But then again: When you consider this diabetes beast we’re all fighting against, it seems to make perfect sense. In a crazy, don’t count on anything, not gonna play fair kind of way.
 
 
 

By StephenS | Posted in Random Glucose | Also tagged , , , | Comments (6)

I really did it.

March 1, 2013 – 9:18 am

Okay, lots of views on yesterday’s post. Guess “Let the bloodletting begin” is something that people just can’t roll over without clicking on. So, how did it go yesterday?

For the first time in over 23 years, I gave blood.

DSC00594

This was all done in a meeting room in the building where I work. Let me tell you how things went.

Since my appointment was just before lunch (not a smart idea in retrospect), about 1/2 hour before I went down to do the blood draw, I checked my BG. 81 mg/dL. I didn’t want to be low during the process, so I drank a juice box before I went down.

Once there, I signed in and received an eight-page folder of information to read. It was pretty much what I looked at online… the procedure, who can and can’t donate blood, some information about questions that will be asked during the question and answer session yet to come.

Then I had to go back behind a partition and answer a few more questions. Name, birthdate, etc. They asked me my name a lot during this process. I don’t know if that was because they wanted to make sure I was of sound mind, or if they were trying to catch me giving blood under an assumed name (why anyone would do this, I don’t know).

They also did a temperature check, took my pulse, and did a blood pressure check. Also, they did a finger stick to check the iron level in my blood. There were no tests at all, no questions at all about my diabetes, my blood glucose level, or how I felt.

All the tests they completed were fine, or at least fine enough for me to give blood. Once that was complete, it was time for me to answer a few personal questions in front of a laptop. I won’t go into the detail, but at least a few of them were of a very personal nature. But easy enough to understand, considering how the blood supply needs to be safeguarded.

At this point, I was finally ready to get the needle stuck in my arm and begin the actual blood donation part of the blood donation process. And not only do I bleed into a bag at this point, they also take some samples and set them aside. This is for additional testing, to see if I have hepatitis or HIV, that kind of thing.

In the end, I donated one pint of blood. I actually had the needle in my arm for about 10 minutes, I’m guessing. Start to finish, considering all of the reading, the questions, the screening, and the draining, the process took about 40 minutes. The process was easy, and the Red Cross people they assigned to this effort were well trained and great to talk to. They had Michael Jackson on the Pandora® in the room, and we all had a big laugh when I told them about deejaying back in the 80s, and how I would play some of that stuff both for wild-eyed boys at frat parties and at country club pool parties for the parents of those kids, and how both groups thought that dancing to Michael Jackson was pretty badass at the time. Don’t know why I threw that in there… it just makes me laugh every time I think about it. I was into John Coltrane, John Mellencamp, and George Clinton at the time, so I don’t really have much room to talk.

Anyway, the real thing I was worried about yesterday was the effect that donating blood would have on my BG. Turns out, not that much of an effect at all. After the blood draw, I went back to my desk and got an 84 mg/dL on my meter. I went to lunch and checked about two hours later: 145 mg/dL. When I got home after work, I was down to 79 mg/dL.

I’m not out of the woods yet, of course. The tests run on my blood may come back with something that makes me ineligible to donate again (but I really hope that’s not the case). I was told to expect a letter in the mail in about a week with the results.

The final verdict… donating blood was easy, in this case it was fun, and I will definitely do it again if I’m allowed to do so. Oh, and it was painless. My advice… It’s a personal decision. If you think you’re eligible, consider donating blood. There may be any number of reasons why you can’t or don’t want to do it. But don’t let the diabetes talk you out of it.
 
 
 

By StephenS | Posted in Diabetes, Random Glucose | Also tagged , , | Comments (5)

Still sick, but better.

December 27, 2012 – 11:39 am

“Sick, sick. He’s always sick. Why can’t he write about something other than being sick?”

That’s because I’m sick.

I’ve been up and down over the last few weeks, with a persistent cough and an occasional fever. Baltimore is a nice place to visit, but you don’t want to come here right now because there’s some kind of wicked virus going around, and everyone has it.

Which leads me to the point of this post. After all these years with diabetes, I’m still trying to figure out how to cope during this scenario:

On Saturday, this virus decided to attack my insides harder than ever (and just 24 hours after I had finished a round of antibiotics). I felt bad in the morning, before breakfast, but I figured if I just had something to eat, I’d be fine. And I was, for about 3 hours. Then, about 11:00, I started feeling bad again. I laid down on the couch for about half an hour, then tried to eat an early lunch. Good thing I decided to eat early, because my BG before lunch was: 64 mg/dL

I only got a little bit of lunch before I started feeling really bad. At this point, I informed The Great Spousal Unit that I was going to go to bed to try and sleep it off. Because I hadn’t eaten much, I checked again, and my BG after eating was: 84 mg/dL

This isn’t pretty, but suffice to say I didn’t make it to bed before everything came up, including lunch, breakfast, and any coffee I had in between. Now the question was before me: What to do about my blood glucose management?

I remember the only Diabetes Educator I ever worked with, in the hospital after my diagnosis. She said, emphatically, that if I ever had a situation like that, I needed to eat, or drink juice, or something, anything to keep my glucose levels up. I think that made sense for the times (1991), because I was on MDI (multiple daily injections). I was dosing insulin only twice per day then. So in that situation, I would have injected half a day’s worth of insulin in the morning, and would have needed to back that up with some carbs to remain at a safe level.

But since I’m on pump therapy now, I reacted differently. I immediately suspended my pump. Then I crawled into bed and slept for three hours. When I woke up, I still felt terrible, but somehow summoned the energy to test my BG again: 111 mg/dL

Then, back to sleep. For another 2 ½ hours. The pump was still suspended, and when I woke up, I checked yet again: 147 mg/dL. Now I decided to try to eat again, but could only manage a little soda and half a slice of toast. No bolus for that, even at 147. And back to sleep again.

When I woke up around 8:00 p.m., I checked my BG for the sixth time that day: 236 mg/dL. I had developed a fever by this point, and I guess having the pump off for 8 hours also contributed to this level. But at least I felt good enough to finish the toast that I started earlier.

Finally, I started the pump again and went to sleep, and kept sleeping until about 7:00 the next morning, which is very late for me. I felt better, good enough to eat breakfast, but still not too good. I still haven’t been able to eat a decent sized meal (more than half a plate of food, any food) since then. Haven’t had any coffee since then either. I worked about six hours from home on Monday and we cancelled our plans with friends and family both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. No sense infecting those not already cursed by this virus. I’ve been getting to bed at around 8:00 every night since then too. The good news is that I feel better today than I’ve felt in a few weeks.

I think I handled the no eat, no insulin blood glucose management thing okay this time. But it’s interesting to think that I thought this out all on my own. I didn’t consult with anyone about what to do. Not sure who I would’ve talked to anyway, since my doctors were all unavailable on Saturday.

I don’t know if my strategy was clever or ridiculously dangerous. I know I’ll ask my endo about it at my next appointment. At any rate, it’s another example of how things are different today than they would have been a couple of decades ago. Diabetes changes, and the way we treat diabetes changes. Okay by me, as long as we stay healthy in the long run.

I hope this scenario never plays out for you. But if it does, is this how you handle things?
 
 
 

By StephenS | Posted in Random Glucose | Also tagged , , | Comments (3)

I don’t like you, your highness.

November 20, 2012 – 10:14 am

Please excuse me for a moment while I rant. It’s been a strange month or so around here. These frickin’ high blood sugars are driving me crazy.

I’ve been very lucky. Since about six months before I went on pump therapy, or about three years ago, I’ve been doing absolutely great managing the glucose. My A1c results have been super.

At my last appointment with my endocrinologist, she was concerned that I was managing things a little too well (my words, not hers), and she had me make a couple of adjustments to my basal rates. So now I have to get used to seeing numbers that are above what I would like.

That’s hard enough for me (not too hard really, but still…). But the last month or so has seen a lot of days where nearly every BG reading is higher than 180.

I don’t like it. I don’t like how it makes me feel. I hate that dry mouth, go to the loo more than usual, feeling lethargic, grab another bottle of water, wait to eat feeling.

And I really don’t like thinking about what this is doing to my future A1c result coming up in December. I mean, I know this is probably not a big deal in my overall diabetes care. But just this short time North of the Border is starting to really do a number on my psyche.

So, what to do? Well, I probably need to listen to my own advice. I’m fond of telling my fellow PWDs that yesterday is yesterday, and you can’t change it. Today is what counts, and if you can put enough good todays together, you’ve got a great future. This isn’t the end of the world, after all.

But I’m pretty mad about it right now. Better get ready, high glucose. I’m coming after you. And I’m not giving up.
 
 
 

By StephenS | Posted in Random Glucose | Also tagged , , | Comments (3)

Random Glucose.

October 4, 2012 – 7:03 am

My day Wednesday started with a BG reading that was practically perfect in every way:

Hard to believe I wound up with 100, since I’ve been major stressed this week. But I took it as a good sign and started on breakfast. Then I went to work.

Move on to lunchtime. Only it wasn’t the normal lunchtime, because everyone at work needed a piece of me yesterday. On top of that, we’re working on a big project that goes live at the end of the month. And a long-awaited vacation is just around the corner, so I’m trying to cross as much off of my list as possible before Friday. Now, where was I? Oh yeah, my BG just before my late lunch was:

64 mg/dL

I brought my lunch with me, so I was able to eat right away. The salami & cheese sandwich and grapes were very good (but I had to brush after).

Then, of course, I went back to work, and I wound up working like a mad dog. And late too… about two hours late. I walk to the subway after work, about 1/2 mile from the office. By the time I got there, I decided to check to see how I was doing since I was late. The result: 61 mg/dL

I quickly popped a couple of candies that I had in my pocket (not a big fan of glucose tabs), and I was okay for the ride home. Of course, once I made the short drive from the station home, and then took a few minutes to say hello to everyone who was already home, my glucose was… wait for it… 67 mg/dL

A little juice, and some soup and cornbread for dinner. Finally, about 10:00 p.m., I checked one more time before bed:

144 mg/dL

What’s the moral of this story? Preparation, preparation, preparation. And don’t wait so long to eat. A few years ago, I might not have had anything extra around to help me if I was low at work. Or on my way home. I wouldn’t have stopped to test prior to getting on the train. I would have eaten when I ate, whenever that would be, if I ate at all. All of that adds up to a lot of uncertainty. I’m okay with dealing with things as I go along. But in this case, I’m not sure I would’ve liked the result.
 
 
 

By StephenS | Posted in Random Glucose | Also tagged , , | Comments (2)