Oh, cruel lunch

I’m having one of those “damn you, diabetes!” moments where my post lunch blood sugar is hovering happily at around 260 mg/dcl and is refusing to budge, despite my best attempts at correction. This is doubly frustrating, first because I didn’t eat anything particularly bad — just a half sandwich and a cup of soup. Secondly, I know full well that as soon as I get up to bike home, my blood sugar is going to plummet — I’ve been known to drop upwards of 150 points in 30 minutes as soon as I walk around.

I just get so frustrated — it’s hard enough to manage diabetes when all your equipment’s working well. But what do you do when you’ve given yourself plenty of insulin but it’s just taking its sweet time to act? It’s a paralyzing feeling — I’m having difficulty concentrating because of the glucose level, but I also can’t take more insulin to correct it because I’m worried about going too low. My natural response? To be pissed off at myself for eating lunch.

Also frustrating: the social difficulty of diabetes. I went to said lunch with an office mate, and she proposed splitting a sandwich with our cups of soup. The little voice in the back of my head that knows my body’s inability to deal with rustic baguettes said no, but the part of me that wanted to be social (and, I’ll admit, the part of me that loves grilled cheese) said yes. And now here I am, two and a half hours later and reeling from the effects of a decision that most people would already have forgotten. I mean, come on. It’s not like we split a piece of pie.

Catherine Price

Catherine Price (www.catherine-price.com) was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. She has written for publications including The Best American Science Catherine Price is a professional journalist who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. Her work has been featured in publications including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Salon, Slate, Men’s Journal, Health Magazine, The Oprah Magazine, and Outside, among others. A graduate of Yale and UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism

View Author Blog

Catherine Price

Catherine Price was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. She has written for publications including The Best American Science Catherine Price is a professional journalist who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. Her work has been featured in publications including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Salon, Slate, Men’s Journal, Health Magazine, The Oprah Magazine, and Outside, among others. A graduate of Yale and UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism