When being diabetic is scary

Those of you who read my blog regularly may remember that I am a type 1 diabetic. Anyway, most of the time I don't mind -- taking a shot with every meal or snack is so normal to me that sometimes I catch myself being surprised when characters in movies that I identify with don't take a shot with their meal. (Funny, huh?) There are times when I consciously think, Wow, hey, yeah... I'm diabetic!!!

Yesterday was not one of those times where I forget or don't mind being diabetic. I struggled with mild lows all day -- between every meal or snack, actually. Then, a few hours after dinner, I started crashing and didn't recognize the symptoms. I just thought I didn't feel well from the wine I had with dinner. (Sometimes wine doesn't sit well with me.) After Michael suggested several times that I check my blood sugar, I finally took his advice... and discovered my blood sugar was well below the crashing point.

It took nearly an hour before my blood sugar climbed back to a level where I could think straight again. I was out of glucose pills, the fast-acting chewable pills that I take when I crash. We didn't have any candy, either. So Michael spoon-fed me honey and opened a soda (which, unfortunately, had natural sugar -- so it wouldn't work as fast as, say, a Coke).

Even while Michael was pretty much shoveling honey into my mouth (I was too dazed to want to chew, let alone pick up, anything), my blood sugar kept dropping. It fell to probably my third-lowest reading ever before it started to come back up. When I finally regained the ability to think straight again, the past hour or so had become a blur -- like a dream that you only half-remember when you wake up. Needless to say, I didn't feel like working anymore (which I'd been intending to do).

The problem with days like yesterday is that it really screws with my work goals. When I have a low, it takes a long time to feel "normal" again, even after my blood sugar returns to a reasonable level. Usually, I feel tired afterward, maybe even a little disoriented depending on how badly I crashed.

Of course, the best thing is to minimize days like yesterday as much as possible. For a few days I'd been suspecting that my nighttime dose (I take a 24-hour insulin called Lantus) was too high, but so far I'd had no clear indication of it. My blood sugar has been a little difficult to control since we returned from our honeymoon, and I think it has something to do with the large amounts of food and exercise we were getting there -- any change in metabolism tends to affect the amount of insulin my body needs. When I took my nighttime dose of insulin last night (several hours after I crashed), I cut the dose back by a few units. I'll just have to monitor it closely over the next day or so and see if it is helping.

Today, unfortunately, I have a lot of catching up to do. Thanks to the combination of dryer problems and yesterday's blood sugar drama, I didn't get my priority assignments done as I had intended. If I am going to catch up in any reasonable amount of time, I need to buckle down and work pretty seriously.