Not A Good Night...

There are just some days where I say, “I hate diabetes”. It just gets to the bottom of my being and I have that moment where I hate my life. At that moment, I truly just wish I didn’t have this disease and that everything would magically be better. But unfortunately, life isn’t like that. Type 1 isn’t something that is going to “go away”. I wrote this entry about a month ago, when I was having one of these moments...

My sugar had been kind of all over the place all day, but I was watching it and correcting as needed. It wasn’t until the evening, after dinner, where all hell broke loose. Before dinner, my blood sugar had gotten down to below 150 — 134 to be exact. Mind you, being pregnant, my fasting numbers are supposed to be between 70-90, so these higher numbers really aren’t great for me or the baby, and make me extra on edge and anxious in general. I had a pretty carby meal for dinner, but it’s something I’ve had a million times before so I knew exactly how I needed to shoot for it, or so I thought. Well, my shot didn’t go as planned. Two hours after dinner, my sugar was 209, when my target number is supposed to be somewhere between 120 - 130. Okay, nothing a little correction shot can’t fix, so I gave myself a correction bolus, and even gave myself an EXTRA .8 units of insulin to cover since I’d been having some issues with my sugar during the day. Exactly an hour later, my sugar hadn’t gone down, it had actually gone UP to 210 even after all of that insulin and insulin on board (ie: still active insulin from dinner). I’m sorry, but what? So again, I give myself MORE insulin. This would be called, stacking, but hey, I’m pregnant, I need my sugar to go down, so this is what I'm going to do. I was sure at this point it was going to go down with the amount of insulin I had now given myself, so I go to sleep, because I’m exhausted and it’s late.

At the same time, I’m going to bed SUPER anxious because, what if, somehow, my sugar still didn’t go down? What if my site was messed up, and I had no idea, and was not getting the insulin I thought I was getting? I did check my site and nothing felt wet, I didn’t smell insulin, and didn’t get any “no delivery” alarms from my pump, so I figured my body was just...not having a good night? I thought I was doing the right thing...

Anyway, I go to sleep, again, not happy, but just too damn exhausted to take the time to change my set and continue to worry. At some point in the night, I feel my husband wake up and attempt to scan my CGM (continuous glucose monitor) but he can’t find my phone and thus is making a bit of a rukus. I wake up enough to give him my phone to give me a scan, and what does my sensor say??? 189 — STILL HIGH. At this point I’m fully awake and take my glucometer out to see my actual reading, and what does it say?! 203. After all that insulin, over alllll that time, my sugar had gone down 7 MEASLY POINTS. Now I’m defeated. I say to Mark, “Well now I need to actually change my site because obviously I’m not getting the correct amount of insulin — what time is it? Should I just get up and start my day? Maybe go for a run?” He answers back, “It’s 3:30 in the morning. I don’t think it’s time for you to get up.” Damnit, it’s the ungodly hour of 3:30 AM and I’m now in the bathroom changing my friggin set to HOPE, again, HOPE to get my numbers down, because ya know, there’s no telling if this will actually work.

By 3:45am I have a new set in, have given myself yet ANOTHER correction bolus, and am climbing back into bed, hoping, praying, WISHING on everything I have in me that my sugar will please, please PLEASE just go down. PLEASE insulin work. PLEASE be a good set. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE. This is where it all hit me and I fell into the dark hole. “Oh my god, my sugar has been so high for hours. Oh my god, I’m hurting the baby. I’m already a bad mother. Why do I have diabetes? Why wasn’t my site working? Why was it fine, and then all the sudden not?? Why didn’t I just have the energy to change my set? I knew it was probably bad and still just let it go. What is wrong with me? How can I be a good mother if I can’t even take care of myself?!”

And that’s when the tears came. That’s when I just broke down and let it all come out. Because yes, I felt defeated. Diabetes had won yet again. It had beaten me down, and I just couldn’t handle it one more second. So I cried. I cried into my husband’s chest, while he comforted me, at 4 in the morning. This is what happens and no, this isn’t a “first time” thing. Sometimes shit just goes wrong, and you do what you think is best, but sometimes what you think is best at that current moment isn’t actually “best”. You try your best to control it, but sometimes, it's just out of your control. It’s all this sick game, and sometimes you just lose.

At the end of the day (or I guess early morning I should say), I got through it. Changing my site was the savior and my sugar did finally go down. But I post this because this is a daily struggle that those with T1 deal with. It’s not easy. It’s a job 100% of the time. There’s no vacation - there are no days off - this is it. No matter how much you wish it would go away, it won’t. There’s no magical drug to cure it.

T1D has no cure.

As I mentioned, this happened last month, but I had one of these moments again last week. My sugar wouldn’t cooperate, it wouldn’t go down, and I hit the wall and just cried, and cried, and cried. I was back in that dark hole. I knew this time it wasn’t a set issue, so instead, I got my ass out of bed, at 12am this time around, and ran up and down the stairs for about 20 minutes. Mark joined in, and even Cash, our little French bulldog, joined Mommy on her early morning workout. This helped! We bought an elliptical the next day…

SO, what we need to do is learn to live with these moments. They come, and they go, and we move on. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to get frustrated. It’s okay to hate diabetes. But what I always have to remember at the end of the day, is that I am strong. I am stronger than my diabetes. I can’t let diabetes win. Yes, sure, it can win in some moments - mere moments. Sometimes it’s so overwhelming that you just need to take a minute and let the emotions ride out. But then, you need to get back up, and put that beetus back in its place and be the amazing YOU you are. Remember you CAN do this. The highs and lows come - but you will always remain on top.

Look out for my next blog post where I’ll get into insulin needs during pregnancy - which was such an eye opener for me!

Until next time,