And goodbye, normalcy! My return back to school was nothing short of crazy, which means my diabetes has been a bit wild as well.
On Labor Day, my family and I packed up two cars (!) worth of my belongings to bring back to school with me. Honestly, I didn’t realize how much stuff I had until it came to loading it all in. Luckily, with their help, everything was put in its place by mid-afternoon – an impressive feat, considering it’s taken us much longer in years past.
The rest of the day was bittersweet. My parents, brother, and I went out to eat and then went our separate ways. I couldn’t help but cry, just a little, when it was time for them to go. Granted, this was in part due to the fact my brother pulled me into a crushing hug that irritated my hip, but it was mainly because it dawned on me that it signified the beginning of my senior year. Where did time go?
The rest of the week was tiring, to say the least. I was running all over the place, attending classes, decorating my apartment, buying books, reuniting with my friends, and paying close attention to nutty blood sugars. So far, I’ve had to deal with lows. Thanks to my CGM, I’ve been able to catch them fairly early on. But what’s been frustrating is that I’ve had a few instances where I have to keep eating small snacks in order to keep my blood sugar up. I love food, but I don’t particularly enjoy it when I’m not hungry because I just finished a full meal not too long before indulging into yet another snack.
This means that I’ll have to adjust my ratio. I’m not going to like this process. When I’m at home, I have a standard insulin to carb ratio for each meal I consume. At school, though, it seems like I need to take less insulin in the morning and be a bit more aggressive in the afternoon and evening. With this in mind, hopefully I can figure out what works best for me.
I’m also presented with an interesting challenge, one that I haven’t had to deal with yet: food being forbidden in classrooms. Two professors made a point of stating this at the beginning of class. I understand that my classes are taking place in some brand new buildings, and that professors want to encourage their students to respect the property and not make a mess. I also understand that there may be allergy concerns. But what I’m unsure of is whether or not they’ll call me out in the middle of lecture for chewing glucose tablets to fix a low blood sugar. I took the initiative to e-mail one professor about this, and I’ll have to sit face-to-face with the other professor because she doesn’t accept student e-mails. I’m oddly excited to do this because I’ve never explicitly discussed my diabetes with a professor. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the conversation goes well. So that’s where I’ll be on Wednesday, in between my Human & Animal Alternative Medicine seminar and my English 494: Dystopian Games, Media, and Comics class. And I know you’re probably a little jealous that these are real classes.
I’ve never had any problems with explaining this to profs – usually they are very lax because the classes are so large it would be difficult to enforce. I explained the situation to one prof who didn’t want food in class, and he was very supportive. I think it was more due to an issue of people bringing whole meals into class and making a big mess! You shouldn’t have to risk a low blood sugar because of that rule, I’m sure there is some kind of regulation with your student organization (here it’s called Access & Diversity). I didn’t… Read more »