A blog about the FRUSTRATION, EXASPERATION and UTTER ANNOYANCE that my type one diabetes causes me due to my fluctuating blood sugars!

I have had a surreal last couple of weeks with my diabetes.  My fluctuating blood sugars of late have been DRIVING ME AROUND THE BEND, so I prepared myself for a good telling off when I recently went to see my local diabetic nurse.  However, I came out of the clinic well and truly stunned!  Not only did she reveal that I had lost almost two stone in weight, but also that my average blood sugar reading had gone down to a great 7.4……..BINGO, BINGO, BINGO!  The diabetic nurse was that overjoyed with me that at one point I thought she was going to high-five me and then do the Michael Jackson moonwalk(not really)!!

I walked home feeling like a cross between Brad Pitt and a randy male peacock doing that funny courtship dance that they do, i.e like a hottie because of the weight loss. I was also  gobsmacked that my blood sugars were so good, the best they have been in years in fact.  Gobsmacked, because lately I seemed to have been at the end tether with regards to having erratic blood sugars.  It had got to the stage where I had come close to tears on several occasions due to my readings being all over the place for seemingly no apparent reason.

I had come close to tears because I am diabetic that cares about my condition.  I want to live as long a life as possible so therefore I need my diabetes to be well controlled.  I have come across diabetics though through the years that didn’t seem to care that much.  For instance, I once knew this diabetic guy that drank like a fish which was absolute madness.  Another memory I have is when I once met this nice girl on a night out who was a fellow type one diabetic, however due to her doing drugs when she was younger she already had two cataract operations.  I am not like this you see, I care but at the same time caring does not then automatically mean that you will have brilliant blood sugar control.

A few weeks ago I woke up one morning and my blood sugar reading was 18.6.  All I can remember about this is the immense feeling of anger that I felt, as well as very loudly shouting out some obscenity due to my utter frustration.  I was so angry because I had been trying reallly hard to get my blood sugars better controlled.  I had not eaten anything that I shouldn’t have just before bed. Neither had I woken up in night and nibbled on a emergency hypo biscuit or two that I always have placed next to me next to my bed.  My blood sugar was what it should have been just before going to bed so everything was in place for a good reading in the morning.  Something had gone wrong though, so step forward ANDY THE DIABETIC DETECTIVE! 

‘ANDY THE DIABETIC DETECTIVE'(which is me by the way just in case I momentarily lost some of you there), this is how suffering from type one diabetes has made me now feel.  For about a good thirty minutes I stood there wracking my brains as to why I had woken up with such a high blood sugar reading.  I felt like Inspector Morse going over the evidence that I had before me, AGAIN AND AGAIN, what was I missing??? GOT IT, finally after forty-five minutes I remembered that the day before I had taken an extra half tablet of the NSAID meloxicam.  It’s like playing a real life medical game of Cluedo. For example, IT WAS MR PINK(me), IN THE KITCHEN, WITH THE CANDLESTICK……I MEAN HALF AN EXTRA MELOXICAM TABLET argh, argh, argh.  MEDICATION AND DIABETES, good God it winds me up!

The only part of being a diabetic that truly FRUSTRATES, EXASPERATES and ANNOYS me, is when I take non-diabetic medication and then my blood sugars go all over the place.  Each medication that I have taken since having type one diabetes has had its own unique impact on my blood sugars.  Some make it go up and some make it go down and you’re sort of expected to be psychic, knowing what the effects are going to be before taking them.  This obviously is impossible so it leads to erratic blood sugars.  I have even had a medication still impacting on my blood sugars seven days after I stopped taking it!!

Apart from my type one diabetes, I suffer with chronic pelvic pain together with a lower back problem.  For these two things I currently take the painkiller tramadol and the anti-inflammatory drug meloxicam.  My blood sugars will be stable if I take the same daily amount of these around the same time of the day seven days a week. However, if I ever deviate from this and say increase the dose of either one of them because I’m very sore one day, my blood sugars will then behave differently than they normally do.  It is this regular occurrence of unpredictable blood sugars that has started to wear me down.  There seems to be too many variables out there that have an impact on my blood sugars,  some days it feels like my diabetes has got the better of me.

It is only through having an erratic blood sugar experience via taking a new medication and learning from it, do I then know what the impact of this new drug will be on my diabetes the next time I take it, i.e ANDY THE DIABETIC DETECTIVE at work again.  For example, my blood sugars remain OK when I take no more than 100mgs of tramadol but anymore than this and they go berserk.   Each separate medication I take alters my blood sugars in a different way, none have the exact same reaction on me.   It is this constant watching and waiting to see how my blood sugars respond to new meds that has finally started to mentally exhaust me at the moment.

Of course it is not just medication that makes me act like a Diabetic Detective.  Strenuous exercise is a tricky thing because this makes my blood sugars plummet.  Therefore, this means that I have to dramatically decrease my insulin levels and usually eat a chocolate bar for a blood sugar boost.  Anger and anxiety causes an adrenalin rush so this makes my blood sugars go up.  Medication, exercise, warmer weather, excitement, worry and EVEN HAVING A LIE IN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, these are all things that impact on my diabetes and can make it a pain to live with at times.

Dieting and trying to lose weight can really be hard for anybody but if you are a diabetic then this can make it even harder.  The first thing I did was to eat less bread, but this then had massive ramifications on my diabetes because bread is a medium to slow acting carbohydrate. i.e makes your blood sugar go up steadily.

It is such a balancing act when you are a type one diabetic and you want to try and diet.  For instance, you want to eat less and so therefore have to have less insulin in order to avoid a hypo(hypoglycemic low blood sugar attack) and all that thus comes with it, i.e feeling awfully drained and having to eat a lot or something sugary, both of which are bad for the waistline.  There is a danger though that you might reduce the insulin by too much and so this makes your blood sugars go too high.  It has felt like I have been playing a constant game of ‘suck it and see’ for the last six months with regards to my blood sugars whilst trying to diet. i.e trying to decide what is the right amount of insulin to have due to eating less and eating healthier.

My frustration at having fluctuating blood sugars whilst dieting got that severe that at one stage I seriously considered scrapping the whole idea of ever trying to lose any weight.  It felt like I was being pulled in two different directions. Yes, I was losing the weight but at the high cost of my blood sugars being higher than I would have liked.   Nevertheless, through once again me being a methodological Diabetic Detective, in time I did manage to sort out dieting with reasonably good blood sugar control .  Dieting and diabetes though, OH WHAT A BELLYACHE IT HAS BEEN!

There you have it then, that is my take on me now feeling like a DIABETIC DETECTIVE.  I am chuffed to bits that my diabetes is so well controlled at the moment but at the same time this does not accurately reflect the true nature of my daily STRESSFUL, type one diabetes life.  I’d much rather be say a DIABETIC MOVIE STAR than ANDY THE DIABETIC DETECTIVE but pretending to be Tom Hanks rather than Inspector Morse, ain’t ever going to crack the big case of me and MY FLUCTUATING BLOOD SUGARS!!!