Category: Blood Sugar

I Forgot About Fingerstick Checks

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It was just after 4:30 P.M. on a Thursday afternoon. I’d spent the last hour and a half at my work desk in my bedroom, checking email and dialing into a video conference call. I’d deliberately left my cell phone downstairs, wanting to resist the temptation to scroll idly through social media or check my blood sugar, which had been misbehaving most of the day.

At the conclusion of my virtual meeting, I lamented that my cell phone was downstairs. I wanted to know what my blood sugar was doing (especially if it was high so I could get some insulin pumping), but I didn’t want to walk that oh-so long distance down the stairs to retrieve it.

I sighed, resigning myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be able to check my blood sugar any time soon.

Then…I remembered.

I have a blood sugar meter mere feet away from me.

I could do a fingerstick check and actually know my blood sugar! I wouldn’t have to wait for my workday to end in order to check it, after all!

I still can’t believe that I momentarily forgot that I could check my blood sugar by pricking my finger…

As I ambled over to my nightstand where my blood sugar meter is always perched, I chuckled to myself, marveling over how I could forget that this was an option readily available to me.

Of course, I had the option to not be a lazy Susan and walk downstairs to get my phone, but that’s not the point! (Plus, I was trying to give myself a much-needed break from it!)

It just struck me as funny – I used blood sugar meters for two decades of my life. And bear in mind here, I haven’t even been alive for a full three decades yet, so blood sugar meters are just something I’ve grown up with. How could I forget about them? Have I really become so reliant on the 24/7 reporting from my Dexcom that I’ve shunted aside my only other device that can tell me what my blood sugars are?

I think that this incident indicates that I have. And that scares me a bit.

When I first became a Dexcom user in my late teenage years, I was told that my CGM wasn’t a replacement for fingerstick checks. So up until 3 years ago (when the Dexcom G6 came out), I tested my blood sugar with my meter at least 3-4 times per day, sometimes even more.

But then the Dexcom G6 came out, and the exciting news that the technology was so advanced that it meant that people with diabetes wouldn’t have to do fingerstick checks. Gone were the days of making diabetes treatment decisions only with confirmatory fingersticks or calibration. This was huge, but I was so untrusting of the technology for the first year or so that I continued on with regular fingerstick checks…

…Until one day I just kinda stopped. My multiple-times-per-day checks turned into maybe once or twice a day, then once or twice a week, and now…really, just once or twice a month. And now I’m facing the reality that I don’t exactly feel that this decision suits me because I am the type of person who craves as much data as possible so I can make the best-informed diabetes choices for myself.

So forgetting about fingerstick checks may just be my remembering again to do them. Because when I did check my level and saw that 140 mg/dL flash up on the screen, I felt reassured and thankful for this data point on my blood sugar graph. It was nice to see this number alone, without the reminder of the yucky numbers I experienced earlier in the day…

And best of all…I didn’t have to go downstairs in order to get this snippet of information.

Luck O’ the Irish Diabetic

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!

Last week, it occurred to me that in more than 3 years of running this blog, I’ve never written anything about St. Paddy’s Day here…so I sought out to rectify that immediately; hence, today’s blog post.

I love St. Patrick’s Day. Always have, always will. I celebrate it each year decking myself out in head-to-toe green. I eat a traditional Irish dinner – always prepared by my mother, until this year when I will attempt to cook the meal myself – that consists of corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and Irish soda bread. We eat it while listening to Irish music and more often than not, we’ll have a Guinness or an Irish coffee along with the meal. My family’s attended St. Patrick’s Day parades in various locations in years past, though obviously, we didn’t go to any last year and we won’t this year, either. But we’re still proud of our Irish heritage and we made the most of it in 2020, as I know we’ll do today.

My parents’ dog, Clarence, and I certainly made the most of the day last year. I was dressed up like this for all of my work video conference calls, which made my colleagues laugh at a time when we all needed one.

So you know my plans for St. Patrick’s Day, but what does this have to do with my blog that’s about diabetes?

Let me explain.

The common denominator between this holidays, all the others, and my diabetes is…food.

Foods consumed on holidays are often special and laden with carbohydrates. Rather than deprive myself, I like to indulge on holidays, and worry a little less about my topsy-turvy blood sugar levels.

You might be thinking, “But the food you described isn’t even that carb-heavy!” and you’d be right, for the most part. Corned beef, cabbage, carrots…those are all easy to bolus for seeing as the carbohydrate content is negligible.

It’s the combo of potatoes – which normally, I can bolus for without any troubles – and Irish soda bread – hellooooo, carbs – that really screws me up.

You see, the problem is that Irish soda bread is too delicious. It’s a quick bread that has a buttery exterior and a tender, mouthwatering interior that’s densely packed with raisins. It doesn’t sound like much, but my mother’s recipe is sheer perfection and I can’t resist helping myself to a big ol’ slice (and a couple of mini, just-one-more-taste slices) of the stuff every year.

So more often than not, my St. Patrick’s Days end with high blood sugars (which I suppose is better than ending with a trip to the toilet due to excessive…ahem, celebrating).

The Irish soda bread is worth the high blood sugar alone, but this year, I’m hoping for a little luck when I tuck into this festive feast. I’m tired of simultaneously welcoming holidays and high blood sugars…it’s about time that I make more of an effort to have better levels when I’m eating special meals. I know the extra work will make the day and the food that much more enjoyable and special.

With a little luck o’ the Irish (and some aggressive bolusing), this diabetic will finally have a St. Patrick’s Day filled with lots o’ green, Guinness, and great blood sugar levels.

Hello, Highs: Pooled Insulin Under my Pod Leads to Elevated BG

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Have you ever tried troubleshooting a problem so much that you start to feel insane, and then like magic, the solution to it becomes clear and you wonder why you hadn’t tried it earlier?

This was the case with me and the mysterious high blood sugars that plagued me for two and a half days.

Based on this image, can you tell what was causing my blood sugar to be stubbornly high?

Once I started noticing a pattern of high blood sugars that got worse every time I ate food, I started doing everything else except changing my pod. I tried taking insulin for double the amount of carbs that I was actually eating, I ran a 95% temp basal increase for 8 out of 24 hours in the day, I cut carbs altogether and ate only 0 carb foods, I skipped meals altogether, and I even tried marching around the house for 15-minute intervals to try to get my insulin pumping through my system faster.

And nothing worked. I was able to get my blood sugar no lower than 180, but for most of that 60-hour window of time, I spent a good chunk of it in the mid-to-upper 200s.

Finally, on the day that my pod was due for a change, I decided that it must be the culprit behind my high blood sugars. When I removed the old pod, I knew immediately that something was wrong because the smell of insulin was so strong; plus, there was a large, damp spot on the pod’s adhesive, indicating that perhaps my insulin was pooling under my pod instead of entering my body.

It took 5-6 hours after I removed the leaky pod, but I finally did start to come back down to my normal levels, and was totally back on track the next day. It was a frustrating experience to endure, but a stark reminder of something that I’ve known in the back of my mind for years: that when I’m in doubt, I should change my pod.

5 Things That Make My Blood Sugar Crash Quickly

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Have you ever noticed that certain activities have a swift and obvious impact on your blood sugar levels?

Well, if you aren’t a person with diabetes, then the answer to that is probably “no”…but I digress! Recently, I realized that there are five things that absolutely, definitely, without-a-doubt make my blood sugar plummet before long. Here’s my list – what’s on yours?

1 – Vacuuming. I live in a fairly small condo – less than 900 square feet total – but when it comes time to vacuuming the floor, it takes me a good chunk of time to do a thorough job. Maybe about 30 minutes total. So it shouldn’t be surprising that by the time I’m done, I’m normally a little sweaty and often in need of a snack because all that moving around has made my blood sugar drop.

Who else “celebrates” vacuuming their entire home by cracking open a fresh…juice box??

2 – Baking. This might be surprising because I’m the type of baker who must lick the spoon and sample the finished product as soon as it’s done, so you might assume that this activity makes my blood sugar go up. Not so. And this is because I am also what I call a “frantic baker”. I shuffle around the kitchen, rifle through cabinets, curse when I can’t find an ingredient and need to rush out to the store to get it…now you must get the idea. I’m always in motion when I’m baking, which pays off in the end. I need to try my baked goods in order to boost blood sugar that went low in the process of creating them. This is one of the many reasons why I love baking!

3 – Playing with my puppy. Little Miss Violet is four months old now and more rambunctious than ever. She loves fetching, running, chasing…and nine times out of ten, I’m fetching, running, and chasing right along with her. Before too long, Violet’s winded and on her way to dreamland while I’m on my way to the kitchen to grab something that will treat my low blood sugar.

4 – Cleaning the bathroom. A self-professed neat freak, I have a very specific process when I’m cleaning the 1.5 bathrooms in my condo. This process probably isn’t the most efficient because it involves a lot of walking up and down the stairs to gather various cleaning supplies, but it does do one thing well: lower my blood sugar, of course.

5 – Walking. This is pretty dang obvious because any sort of physical activity/exercise is bound to make my blood sugar drop, but not in the same way that walking does. I swear that 10-15 minutes of walking at a normal pace is enough to drop my blood sugar by about 100 points – that’s how effective it is for me. Walking is my sneaky little trick when my blood sugar is a tad too high: Instead of taking insulin to correct it, I just have to get a quick walk in and I’m falling fast in no time.

The Best Time for Me and My Diabetes to Exercise

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I am a phony morning person.

By that I mean that I pretend that I like getting up early in the mornings, but truth be told…I hate it. Oh how I long for the days that I could sleep in as late as I wanted and shun my very few responsibilities…

Even though I clearly don’t love waking up early, there is one benefit to it that truly lasts all day long. And that is getting my workouts done within the first hour or so of my day.

Listen, I’m not a fitness freak. I don’t have a ripped bod. More often than not, I’m working out so I can eat and drink the things that I like without feeling as terrible about it (only light sarcasm used in that previous sentence). But I do like exercising and try to do so every single day because, well, it’s good for me and definitely helps me to produce better blood sugars.

Exercising is a thousand times harder than it needs to be, though, when my blood sugar crashes halfway through a routine – which happened a lot more than I wanted it to when I was working out in the afternoons or evenings.

Fed up with the lows, I changed up my routine and that’s when I discovered the beauty of fasting morning workouts.

I am definitely not as flexible as this cartoon lady.

I learned that if I work out soon after I wake up in the morning and wait until after I’m done to eat breakfast, then lows almost never happen. It’s like magic. I’m able to get through my exercise routine (which is usually a half hour circuit of some sort) without having to modify my basal rates whatsoever. Since I don’t have any insulin on board (because I haven’t eaten any food yet), I’m only working out with my basal rate running in the background, so there’s a much lower chance that my blood sugar will really fluctuate when I’m exercising. Of course, mornings that I wake up with a low or a high blood sugar are a little more challenging, seeing as I either have to bring it back up to a good level for working out or get some insulin pumping in my system, but I wake up most mornings with my blood sugar in a range that makes me feel comfortable working out in.

All the diabetes business aside, I gotta say…my other favorite part of working out first thing is that it’s over with and done for the day. Ba-da bing, ba-da boom. It’s not looming over my head for the remainder of the day, and that’s a really nice feeling.

A.M. exercise is A-O.K. to my diabetes and me.

The Best Breakfast for my ‘Betes

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I have a new favorite breakfast, both blood-sugar-wise and taste-wise, that I just had to write about here.

And that breakfast is: egg wraps! I take a low-carb spinach and herb tortilla, add eggs, sprinkle on some cheese, tuck in some turkey sausage or a scoop of guacamole, and wrap it all up for a totally delicious, lower-carb meal that I honestly can’t get enough of these days.

I love how surprisingly versatile this breakfast wrap is. I can lighten it by using scrambled egg whites in place of eggs with yolks, I can season it however I want (though my preference is everything but the bagel seasoning), and when I’m feeling spicy, I can add a few shakes of garlicky hot sauce for some zip. When I have fresh veggies, I’ll add those to the wrap, too, for some more color, flavor, and texture. Sprouts are really great in this kind of wrap, as is spinach or even chopped onions and peppers (I like cooking frozen ones with my eggs because they’re easy to have on hand at all times).

You’re probably wondering why I didn’t take a picture of my wonderful wraps for this posts and well…I ain’t a food blogger, I take awful food pictures! So just pretend this photo is a perfect representation of my new fave breakfast. Please and thanks. 🙂

So obviously this wrap is a winner in terms of taste, but it’s really excellent for my blood sugars, too. I don’t typically bolus for more than 15 carbs for this meal (the wrap is only 4 net carbs and everything else that I add in has negligible carb content OR I just bolus for the protein) and the low glycemic index means that I never see a blood sugar spike after eating one of my wraps. And let me be real: I love my breakfast carbs (waffles, pancakes, muffins, even cereal…omg they’re all amazing to me), but they’re a pain in the ass to bolus for properly. Even when I do nail my bolus for a high-carb breakfast item, I’m not always able to do a pre-bolus (in other words, take insulin 15-20 minutes before I eat to give it time to start working ahead of the carbs) and avoid that carb-induced spike…which means I end up skyrocketing shortly after I eat, only to level out later. That’s not the worst thing in the world, but I’d prefer to not experience any sudden blood sugar jump, period.

Need I sell the benefits of this breakfast any further?! Knowing myself, I’ll have a new morning staple before too long, but for now I’ll *wrap* up this blog post on my *eggs*cellent breakfast wrap before I get too *cheesy* with the puns…

…Okay, okay, I’ll see myself out now.

The Bad ‘Betes Habit I’ve Tried to Break for 23 Years (and It’s Still a Work in Progress)

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Bad habits are notoriously difficult to break.

Nail-biting. Forgetting to floss. A social media addiction. Swearing. Luckily, I only struggle with two out of the four of those (I’ll let you figure out which ones are a big fuckin’ problem for me while I go check my Instagram account real quick).

When it comes to diabetes-specific bad habits, though, well let’s just say that in more than two decades of life with diabetes, there’s a biiiiiig bad (Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, think Big Bad like Evil Willow or Glorificus) habit that feels impossible to break.

And for me, that’s snacking freely without bolusing.

When I’m snacking throughout the day, I am not nearly as adorable about it as this cartoon girl (and I am almost never snacking on something as healthy as the piece of fruit she’s cutting up).

When I say “snacking freely”, I think it’s more accurate to call it grazing…I’m not eating large quantities of food or anything particularly carb-heavy, but it is usually enough to impact my blood sugar, at least moderately.

I’ve acknowledged this as a bad habit in a previous blog post, but for the first time, I’m really taking a step back and thinking about how if I stop doing this, I might see a tangible change in not just my blood sugar levels, but my A1c.

Don’t get me wrong, my A1c reading isn’t the most important thing to me (I’d rather focus on time in range, or the amount of time I spend each day below my high limit and above my low limit). But it is something that does come up, and will always come up, during appointments with all of my healthcare professionals. It’s definitely not something that they will be ignoring any time soon, and this year, I’d like to have an A1c that I’m a little more proud to own.

So I’m going to actively try and break this bad habit.

Whenever the desire to snack/graze strikes, I’m going to do what the pros recommend: Have a glass of water. Walk outside for a few minutes. Play with my puppy. Find a task around the house to focus on instead. Actively seek something else that will consume my time instead of me consuming something that will ultimately have a negative impact on my blood sugar as well as my mood. Be more careful about portion control when treating low blood sugars, because I can really spiral and eat half the damn kitchen when correcting a low, and it ain’t cute. And when all else fails and I need a snack (no shame in that game) actually take a freaking bolus for it because it’s okay to eat something extra throughout the day, I just need to stop being lazy and measure out whatever it is so I know exactly how much insulin I need to cover for it. That part isn’t rocket science, so I should stop treating it as such.

All bad habits are difficult to break, and I know one that’s been around for most of my life will make it particularly challenging…but it’s a new year, a great excuse for making a positive change with my eating habits and blood sugar levels, so I say bring on the challenge.

The Worst Time for a Low Blood Sugar

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There’s never necessarily a good time to have a low blood sugar: Whenever they happen, they’re bound to be at least a little inconvenient.

But I was thinking about it the other day and it occurred to me that there is most definitely a worst time for a low blood sugar…at least, for me.

And that time is the middle of the night.

I love sleeping, but like many adults, I simply don’t get enough of it. So when something like a low blood sugar interrupts my slumber, it’s downright intrusive and honestly a bit scary, because I always have an underlying fear that I’ll sleep through my Dexcom alarms.

Take a recent middle-of-the-night low blood sugar for example…I was dealing with a lingering low at 1:30 A.M. I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours when I heard my Dexcom sound. I ignored it the first 3 times it went off, but something – my intuition, maybe – told me to roll over and at least check to see the level that my Dexcom was reporting.

I was somewhere in the 60s: low enough that I needed a juice box. I promptly drank it and got settled back under my covers, assuming that I would shoot back up in no time.

Nothing like waking up to a screaming Dexcom that demands you to eat sugar, stat!

Not quite. I don’t know how many minutes later, but I looked at my Dexcom again and it said I was 56. I did the whole “confirm the number with my meter” shtick and ate some glucose gummies to supplement the juice box. I was irritated and my eyes were oh-so-heavy, but from there I forced myself to turn the television on and try to get distracted by a show so I wouldn’t fall back asleep until I knew that my blood sugars were stable again. Before too long, I was heading up, so I did my best to lull myself to sleep, though I tossed and turned for awhile before I finally did drift off.

All in all, I lost about an hour to an hour and a half of sleep because of this one instance! Not all of my lows are like that – sometimes I can fix them in 5 minute flat, other times they keep me up for upwards of two hours – but it doesn’t even really matter. It’s more so the principle of the thing.

Plus, think about how freakin’ ridiculous it is that people with diabetes have to eat something sugary to come up from a low – that in itself isn’t wild, but it IS grating to have to do in the middle of the night when you aren’t hungry and were enjoying a deep sleep. Also…ever try drinking orange juice after you’ve brushed your teeth? It’s unpleasant, to put it mildly.

So you have it: The middle of the night is the absolute worst time for a low blood sugar, in my semi-expert opinion.

My Lowest BG: How I Handled It and What It Taught Me

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There should be an asterisk after this blog title…because this is going to be about the lowest bg that I can really remember and have an actual blood sugar to associate with it.

Let me elaborate…

My real lowest low happened when I was in high school – I got out of bed one morning, stumbled down the stairs, and slurred to my mom that I wanted a bowl of Special K cereal for breakfast (she couldn’t understand what I said and promptly panicked before realizing I must be low). I don’t know what my blood sugar level was that morning because I neglected to do a fingerstick check, but I do know that it was a downright freaky incident that’s cemented in my memory.

But another new incident recently occurred that shook me in a similar way.

It was 1:30 A.M. I was nodding off when I heard my Dexcom alarming. I checked it and was somewhat surprised to see that I was 92 with two double down arrows. (I say “somewhat surprised” because in the earlier evening hours, I spent 3-4 hours chasing a stubborn high blood sugar and definitely wound up stacking insulin doses.)

Even though I wasn’t feeling any low symptoms, I decided to start treating the low. I ate two boxes of mini raisins, equaling about 20 carbs…

…and swiftly grew worried when I saw the number on my Dexcom app to continue to drop.

Below 55.

Okay, let’s have another box of raisins.

Below 50.

Alright, let’s do a fingerstick check.

42.

Sheesh, I’m fumbling around in the dark, trying to locate my meter…

LOW.

By the time my Dexcom said “LOW”, it was confirmed on my meter that I was, indeed, quite low. 35, to be exact.

If only my Livongo meter knew I needed a whole lot more than a tablespoon of sugar, jam, jelly, or honey…

And that was a number that frightened me.

Thank goodness I wasn’t alone when I was dealing with this 35 (that wound up lingering for a solid 15-20 minutes before slowly creeping up about 45 minutes after I ate my first box of raisins).

Thank goodness I had someone there to make sure I had plenty of sugar in my system before I fell asleep.

Thank goodness I had a can of regular ginger ale, some Reese’s, Dove chocolates, and popcorn all within arm’s reach (yes, I really did need to eat all those carbs in order to treat this one low).

Obviously, I recovered from this scary low, but it taught me that now that I’m living alone and won’t always have someone around me in the middle of the night, I should start thinking about inviting someone to follow me on the Dexcom app.

The next day, I talked to my parents about what happened and the three of us agreed that my dad will receive notifications if/when my blood sugar drops below 55. I feel a lot better knowing that he has access to my levels and that he knows to contact me if I’m low.

I’m not exactly grateful that I experienced this very low blood sugar…but I do appreciate that it’s reinforced the importance of having a nightstand fully stocked with low treatments as well as making sure that my family has a way of checking in on me when I may need their support.

How Diabetes Told Me It’s Too Early for Christmas Decorations

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We all know that 2020 has been a sucky year, so it’s not exactly surprising that immediately following Halloween, the world seemed to throw itself into the holiday spirit.

Between the commercials on TV, Black Friday sales, sparkly decorations, baking galore, and Hallmark movies, the Christmas season kicked off early and with major vivacity. Normally, I’m the kind of person who prefers to enjoy one holiday at a time, and I was somewhat repulsed to see all the Christmas merchandise in stores before Halloween was over.

So even though Thanksgiving hasn’t even come and gone yet, I’ve abandoned any remaining willpower I’ve had to hold off on decorating for Christmas. Like the rest of society, I simply couldn’t hold back my desire for some cheer!

One afternoon last week, I decided to haul up my Christmas tree and its accompaniments from the basement and start the process of decking the halls…

…but my diabetes had other ideas.

Maybe my diabetes would’ve liked it better if I decked the halls with glucose tablets and test strips…

I’d just finished assembling my modest tree when I heard my Dexcom alarm sounding off, alerting me to a low blood sugar.

And I hate to admit it, but it didn’t surprise me – I’d felt the oncoming low for about 10 minutes prior.

I just wanted to decorate so badly that I was willing to ignore my blood sugar in order to embrace the Christmas spirit!

Alas, not too long after I heard that alarm, I knew I had to change my priorities as I started to get sweaty and a little woozy…so I left my tree naked and sought out a low treatment, slumping at my table in defeat while I ate it.

My diabetes told me it was too early to decorate for Christmas at that moment in time…

But you know that I told my diabetes otherwise later that night when I spent hours trimming the tree!

‘Tis the season and ain’t no way that my diabetes will prevent me from basking in it.