When it comes to solving the mystery of why I recently experienced high blood sugar for a prolonged period of time, let’s just say I was a wannabe Sherlock Holmes.

I’m going with “wannabe” here because I lacked the satisfaction of deducing the exact culprit, but at least I had my wits about me enough to come up with a few reasonable explanations.

The scenario: I was riding between 200 and 250 for hours. I did a temporary increase of my insulin for a bit, took 2-3 micro-doses of insulin (in order to avoid stacking), and did my best to stay hydrated while avoiding carbs. And I barely budged, much to my frustration. All throughout dinner that night, I was anxiously eyeing my Dexcom and hoping to level out before long. It was only after I went on a 45-minute after-dinner walk that I started to drop, and it took me quite a while longer than usual for me to be totally back within range.

The questions: Did my mid-afternoon pod change throw something off? Was my carb counting wrong? Was it something I ate? Was my pod working the way it should’ve been? Did I get enough exercise throughout the day? Too much? Was it due to anxiety or stress? Some other factor that never even crossed my mind?

The clues: A couple of clues helped me eliminate the cause of the high blood sugar. For starters, it couldn’t have been the insulin – it’d been refrigerated and I’d been using the same vial for a couple of weeks without any issue. It also likely wasn’t either of my pods, because the one I’d worn for the full 3 days had worked fine, and the new one that I applied mid-afternoon did work for the full 3 days…even though it seemed to take some time to adjust to my body. I definitely didn’t eat the healthiest meal (my entree may have been a green salad, but I also ordered a sugary cocktail and had fried pickles as an appetizer). And I was dealing with slightly higher levels of stress than usual.

The case cracked (sorta): All of those aforementioned conditions combined could have contributed to the high blood sugar. Unfortunately, I can’t quite say with certainty that they did, because on paper, I did everything right in order to combat the highs. That’s just the thing with diabetes, though: You can do everything “perfectly”, and the way it “should” be done, but sometimes you can’t prevent these little mysteries from popping up and keeping life with diabetes…ah, well, “interesting”.