Sometimes, all it takes is one bad reading. It comes at the wrong place or time (often both), and it pisses you off.
I’m referring to the mild case of diabetes burnout that I experienced this week. I call it “mild” because it was fleeting and was not accompanied by the typical array of emotions that are associated with a real case of burnout. This time around, it lasted the length of a day and mainly made me aggravated. It all began bright and early, Monday morning…
I woke up to a beautiful blood sugar of 97 mg/dL, which made me especially happy after having to change my pod the night before. I rolled out of bed after testing, and as I started going about my morning routine, I noticed I felt a little shaky and dazed as if I was dropping low…odd, right? My CGM told me that I was stable, so I tried to shake the sensations and attribute it to grogginess. Nevertheless, I decided to eat breakfast before showering in the hopes that might give me the boost my body seemed to need. One smoothie and half a coffee roll later, I felt confident that I could resume getting ready without exacerbated low symptoms. I gave myself a bolus, guesstimating a higher carb count than normal due to the coffee roll, and went to go shower.
15 minutes later, I still wasn’t out of my fog. I wondered if I went overboard with my carb calculations and gave myself too much insulin. Without mulling it over further, I grabbed a small handful of fast-acting cereal to counteract this possibility.
All the diabetes drama was making me late for work, so I didn’t pay much attention to what my CGM was reporting over the next hour. When I finally got to the office, I did pay it a glance and saw I was sitting well at about 134 mg/dL. Maybe I’d made the right call, after all.
Not exactly. Unbeknownst to me, my blood sugar stealthily climbed to exceed 200 mg/dL over the next few hours. By lunchtime, I was simultaneously starving and irate when I tested and discovered I was 256! I bolused and sat there, steaming, as I tried to figure out where I went wrong. Did it have to do with my choice of breakfast? Was it because I didn’t sleep well enough? Should I have ignored my body’s pseudo-low symptoms?
Whatever it was, it triggered me to feel very fed-up and negative about my diabetes for the rest of the day. Granted, I did come back down nicely by the nighttime, but I wasn’t over the fact that my diabetes had been so sneaky on me. Between the symptoms I felt and the slow rise to a hyperglycemic reading, I felt tricked. As a result, I knew I was ready to blame my anger on some good ol’ fashioned diabetes burnout. I felt tired of diabetes and its mean mind games and just wished it would go away.
But of course, reality sinks in at some point. As my day came to a close, I was ready to move past this day of feeling terrible about my diabetes management and kick ass the next day. And as it would happen, I did. This case of diabetes burnout turned into some damn good motivation, so I guess it isn’t always that bad.
I was diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes and put on Metformin on May 21st, 2014. I started the ADA diet, using it as directed 100% for weeks – still my blood glucose did not get below 140. I questioned my doctor about my options and he said I would be on metformin the rest of my life – until moving to insulin. Meds were the only option he gave me. Then, I found the Diabetes Destroyer book ( review: http://steamspoils.com/diabetes-destroyer-review/ ) It made sense and opened my eyes to the possibility of natural diabetes treatment. I started to implement David… Read more »