The Insulin Experiment: Day 8

Well, I just had what was probably the dorkiest evening of my diabetic life. I haven’t eaten out in the past week, since I’m trying my best to keep track of everything I put in my mouth. But having fasted from breakfast till 6 in the evening (I wanted to see how my afternoon basals were — more on that later), I was hungry. And my husband, tired of eating the same thing for dinner for the past week, was eager to get out of the house. And we had plans with a friend. And so we went to sushi.

Usually I’d get a couple rolls and guesstimate the rice’s carbs, but tonight, I decided to go hardcore. I brought my log book, my Calorie King carb counting book (though I eventually had to use my friend’s iPhone to figure things out — how useful is it to know the carb count of a tablespoon of uncooked sushi rice, people? NOT VERY), and — my coup de grace — a measuring cup. I then proceeded to disassemble my nigiri, stuffing the rice into my measuring cup to get a sense of how much I was actually eating.

I swear I’m not usually like this.

I’m still waiting to see how the night turns out, but as is always the case, the experiment wasn’t perfect: I was very hungry, and so I also got agadashi tofu (chunks of tofu, lightly fried). It came drizzled with a sweet sauce. And between the question of the tofu itself (each firmness level of tofu has a corresponding carbohydrate density), the sauce and the breading, I really do not know how many carbs was in it.  I’m sort of regretting eating it — I had been so good! — but you know what? I was really freaking hungry. And one can only experiment so much before remembering that I am, in fact, a human being. And human beings eat dinner.

The interesting thing today, actually, was that my afternoon basals also seem to be fine. In fact, they might be a little high. After going up to 150 briefly around noon (weird, since I’d eaten breakfast at 8am and had nothing since) they dropped back down to 85 and stayed there all afternoon. It makes me wonder whether there might be yet another confounding variable in all this — thanks to a clinical trial I was in right when I was diagnosed, I still make a tiny bit of insulin. I’m very grateful for this, of course. Sometimes I feel like my body can still make tiny compensations when needed, as in the case of an afternoon fast. (Throw a sushi roll at it, however, and all hell breaks loose.)

Anyway, I’m even more interested now to see what happens at my checkup on Friday — and am happy to say that I’m feeling slightly better than I was before. At least now I know that my daytime basals are reasonable (though so much lower than before!), which leaves boluses as the main challenge. There are still countless variables that go into every blood sugar fluctuation, but I’m grateful to have quasi-pinned down at least one moving part.

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

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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