A millimole of a crisis

Happy sleep an extra hour day!!! Did you sleep your extra hour away? Did you toss and turn for that extra hour? Or were you a keener and got out for an early morning run? I slept … and then proceeded to stress over my blood sugars.

They’re killing me! Since coming home, I’ve been stressing – A LOT – over my blood sugars. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to having perfect blood sugars. I think it probably has something to do with the fact that for several years as a kid and a teenager, I had a lackadaisical attitude when it came to my diabetes. – Sorry moms – I pretended I didn’t have diabetes and would do things like give my moms plants my insulin, not eat my lunches, eat chips and chocolate bars for lunch, and drink alcohol like prohibition was going to be enacted the very next day, and not just hard alcohol, I’d go for things like sourpuss vodka (hello sugar!) and diet sprite … least I got the diet sprite right! So when I finally took control of my life, stopped living in denial (for that at least ;)) I became somewhat OCD when it came to my blood sugars. I love walking into my specialist’s office and seeing the smile on his face when he reads my numbers, I love hearing him say “These are numbers to grow old with.” And I love the way I feel with these numbers. And so, when I see them creeping up, even by just a millimole*** or two, I start freaking out – which does not help. (stress can wreak havoc on blood sugars, just like hormones, season changes, etc., etc.)

While I was training for the marathon, I purposely kept them higher while I was running, and that was okay, because I knew they would balance out for the rest of the day. But now that I’m not training anymore, that’s not okay. I’ve been trying everything to balance them out, eliminating chocolate and other such desserts, eating foods where I know the exact carb counts for, but to no avail. I wake up in the mornings with nothing less than 8.0; by mid-morning, they’re anywhere from 11.0 to 13.0; mid-afternoon, they’re 13.0 and up. I get a bit of a reprieve around dinner, with them ranging from 3.5 to 7.0, but it’s only a short reprieve, as they go back up again in the evenings.

My BG averages , according to my glucometre, (which doesn’t give the full picture as it doesn’t show a 24-hour reading of my blood sugars, but still gives a glimpse of where I’m standing) are:
• 7 days: 9.7
• 14 days: 8.9
• 30 days: 8.5
I like them to be in the 6.0 range!!!

While red is a great colour in my living room, it's not a great colour on these charts, in fact, it's a bad, bad colour!

I know that I’m not running, but I’m also not eating as much as I was while I was running, so it doesn’t make sense to me why they won’t balance out. And I know that it’s only been a week since I’ve really taken charge in getting them back to normal again, but when it’s your life, well mine at least, you tend to be a little impatient when it comes to perfection. Maybe my insulin didn’t travel well? Maybe my insulin sensitivity balance is off with the decrease in exercise? Maybe it’s the colder weather? Maybe it’s time I schedule an appointment with the insulin pump nurse? Yep, I’m thinking that’s exactly what I need to do!

*** So some of you may (or may not) have noticed that in some blog postings I’ve used mg/dl (milligrams per decilitre) for blood sugar measurement, and in others I’ve used mmol (millimoles) The reason for the different measurements is because, well, I got confused. For as long as I can remember, I always thought the Canadian BG measurement was in mmols, but then I went to a conversion chart to see what my number would translate to in the American measurement (they use a different one) and I could swear it said that we use the mg/dl and the Americans use the mmol. But that’s not the case, I was totally backwards. The Americans use mg/dl and we use mmol, so from this day forward, you will see mmol on my blog – but seriously, why can’t we all just use the same darn measurement, especially given that we’re like right next door to each other! It would be a whole lot less confusing that way. Just saying…