{"id":26180,"date":"2012-04-05T04:13:33","date_gmt":"2012-04-05T08:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=26180"},"modified":"2016-01-08T05:16:55","modified_gmt":"2016-01-08T10:16:55","slug":"high-blood-sugar-again-and-again-and-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=26180","title":{"rendered":"High Blood Sugar, Again and Again and Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright lazyload\" style=\"border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"kerrisparling\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/kerrisparling-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"159\" height=\"240\" \/><\/span><\/span>High blood sugar was the subject of two recent posts on ASweetLife. \u00a0It\u2019s not really surprising given how common high blood sugar is in people with diabetes, even in those who take very good care of\u00a0themselves. \u00a0Oftentimes, however, we focus on the lows rather than the highs because lows are dramatic and they can take us down in just a few minutes. \u00a0But high blood sugar has its own dangers. \u00a0As\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/karmel\/blogs\/health-blogs\/its-complicating\/25943\/\" target=\"_blank\">Karmel Allison<\/a>\u00a0wrote last week, \u201cThe threat is real. High glucose levels wreak havoc, especially when combined with high lipid levels. The human body is not designed to handle that sort of slow, rich assault\u2026\u00a0Sure, a few high blood sugar measurements\u00a0would go unnoticed over a lifetime. But it\u2019s never just a few; diabetes is years of building up high blood sugars, of training my cells and my tissues to be pro-inflammatory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>A few days after reading Karmel\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/karmel\/blogs\/health-blogs\/its-complicating\/25943\/\" target=\"_blank\">post<\/a>\u00a0about hyperglycemia, I experienced high blood sugar that wiped me out. \u00a0I\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/jessica-apple\/blogs\/personal-blogs\/diabetes-denial\/26073\/\" target=\"_blank\">blogged<\/a>\u00a0about it, but had a hard time describing how it felt. \u00a0Then I read Kerri Sparling\u2019s post, Oh, High!, and saw that she did a great job of articulating the feeling of high blood sugar. \u00a0Many of you probably read this post when it ran on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/sixuntilme.com\/blog2\/2012\/04\/highs.html\" target=\"_blank\">SixUntilMe<\/a>. \u00a0If you didn\u2019t catch it there, Kerri has kindly shared it with us on ASweetLife. \u00a0Thank you, Kerri! \u00a0 \u2013 \u00a0Jessica Apple<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Oh, High!<\/strong><\/h2>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Sunday morning started off with promise &#8211; a fasting blood sugar of 99 mg\/dL, a healthy breakfast of tea, a banana, and some scrambled eggs, and I remembered to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/sixuntilme.com\/blog2\/2009\/07\/its_in_the_fridge.html\" target=\"_blank\">grab my curling iron out of the fridge<\/a>\u00a0before meeting my ride to the airport.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I took an aggressive bolus for breakfast (because travel sometimes makes me\u00a0 run a bit higher, for whatever reason), so I was surprised to see double-up arrows on my Dexcom graph while I was standing in the airport security line.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;Hmmm \u2026 172 and double ups \u2026 with three units of insulin on board.&#8221;\u00a0 The diabetes mental-math made sense to me. &#8220;I&#8217;m going to let this blood sugar ride out instead of rage blousing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But by the time I was in my seat on the plane, I was at 312 mg\/dL.\u00a0 I do not know why.\u00a0 I calculated breakfast.\u00a0 I bolused well before I ate.\u00a0 And I didn&#8217;t feel stressed or nervous or whatever.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But now I was high. And I felt high.\u00a0 High, high, high.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It&#8217;s a thick feeling in the base of your brain, like someone&#8217;s cracked open your head and replaced your gray matter with sticky jam.\u00a0 I find myself zoning out and staring at things, and my eyeballs feel dry and like they&#8217;re tethered to my head by frayed ropes instead of optic nerves.\u00a0 Everything is slow and heavy and whipped with heavy cream.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">During the first hour of my flight from Austin to Baltimore, I tried to write but the words were stuck in my teeth.\u00a0 I tried to read a book but I kept skimming the same sentences over and over again without really reading them. And I watched my blood sugar holding steady in the 300&#8217;s, despite my boluses.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sixuntilme.com\/blog2\/2010\/01\/looking_back_rage_bolus_anyone.html\">Rage-bolusing<\/a>\u00a0is a hard thing for me to avoid, especially once I&#8217;m so deep into a high blood sugar that I&#8217;d do just about anything for a bottle of water and a 120 mg\/dL.\u00a0 When I&#8217;m high, my back aches.\u00a0 My eyes hurt.\u00a0 My breath smells like the glue you use to assemble model airplanes.\u00a0 My whole body is wrapped in cotton balls and I&#8217;m reduced to a lazy, lethargic lump in a seat, without a shred of energy and zero desire to smile.\u00a0 I want to bang on the buttons of my pump, ringing through a billion units. I want to know why my breakfast bolus didn&#8217;t make a dent, and why these subsequent &#8220;fix it&#8221; boluses aren&#8217;t doing shit.\u00a0 Is my infusion set crapped out?\u00a0 Is my insulin vial spoiled?\u00a0 Am I dehydrated?\u00a0 Did I miscalculate my breakfast bolus?\u00a0 Did one of the fifteen thousand diabetes variables go rogue on me?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I didn&#8217;t want to swap out my infusion set in the bathroom on the plane and then have to wait, wait, impatiently wait to see if another bolus will hit my bloodstream.\u00a0 I tested my blood sugar again and saw that I was up to 360 mg\/dL, and the Dexcom graph didn&#8217;t show any promise of a drop anytime soon.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Which is how I ended up busting out my insulin pen on the flight, about two hours into my flight, sneaking in a quick injection into my belly while the girl next to me read her biology textbook.\u00a0 (She didn&#8217;t notice.\u00a0 Even after all these years on a pump, I can still manage to inject discreetly.)<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"The plane was up high ... and so was my blood sugar. It's almost too literal; I can't take it.\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7036\/7040758279_98b5120183_o.jpg\" alt=\"The plane was up high ... and so was my blood sugar. It's almost too literal; I can't take it.\" width=\"430\" height=\"323\" border=\"0\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">By the time I was on my connection flight, I had settled back into range. Was it the string of small boluses, finally catching up with me?\u00a0 Can I thank the injection?\u00a0 Either way, the molasses in my veins had been replaced, once more, by blood.\u00a0 Game over for diabetes chaos.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">And looking at my Dexcom graph, I realize that diabetes gives a whole new meaning to &#8220;mile\u00a0<em>high<\/em>\u00a0club.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>This post originally appeared on <a href=\"http:\/\/sixuntilme.com\/blog2\/2012\/04\/highs.html\" target=\"_blank\">SixUntilMe<\/a>. \u00a0Photos courtesy of Kerri Sparling.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rage-bolusing is hard for me to avoid, especially once I&#8217;m so deep into a high blood sugar that I&#8217;d do just about anything for a bottle of water and a 120 mg\/dL&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":26185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1456,1428],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.9 (Yoast SEO v22.9) - 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