(Yes, the “boos and ghouls” is a cheesy take on “boy and girls”…I have a goofy sense of humor, what can I say?!)
Happy Halloween! Just a friendly post to say: Yes, people with T1D can enjoy Halloween. Whether they choose to eat candies or stay away from them, there’s haunted happenings of all varieties that they can partake in. Here’s a little glimpse at what I did today to celebrate:
I dressed up as Belle from Beauty and the Beast! I love all things related to Disney, so I happily donned this costume to work today.
Speaking of work, we had a small Halloween celebration in the office! Pictured are several of the sweets we offered throughout the day. We also did a “spooky” scavenger hunt and had a costume parade, both of which were as awesome and fun as they sound!
I also baked cupcakes for my coworkers! I didn’t eat any (I wanted to save my insulin for a few Reese’s cups, instead – they’re my favorite), but I had a blast baking these and using fondant to create some festive designs.
It doesn’t matter if you’re low-carb, sugar free, T1D, or none of those things – Halloween is for everyone to make whatever they want out of it! With that said…
Last week, my mom and I both rediscovered the reason why we usually order side salads with burgers or sandwiches served in restaurants: french fries. They’re tasty, carb-y, salt bombs that wreak havoc on our blood sugar. We’re both convinced that our indulgence in fries at dinner was responsible for the dramatic spikes, followed by sharp plummets, that interrupted our sleep overnight and made us understandably grumpy the following morning.
Here’s the timeline of what happened:
6:30 P.M. – Dinnertime. Ordered a chicken pesto sandwich with a side of sweet potato fries. I thought I’d be safe as long as I didn’t eat all of my fries, and if I left behind half of the bun. This certainly helped, but my carb counting was either severely off or the high amount of fat that I consumed threw my blood sugar for a loop.
7:30 P.M. – Blood sugar holding fairly steady around 160 mg/dL. Maybe restraining my carb consumption worked, after all!
9:00 P.M. – Eh, not so much. I’m seeing a diagonal arrow pointing up, indicating that I’m slowly creeping into the 200s. I’m not pleased.
10:13 P.M. – Yep, topping out at about 255 mg/dL. Gross! I take some insulin and wait for it to kick in.
This is as high as my blood sugar got after eating the evil french fries…
11:30 P.M. – I feel relieved, I’ve come down to below 180 mg/dL and I can now go to sleep. I’m not dropping fast and I suspect that, due to the insulin I have left on board, I’ll level out around 130 mg/dL overnight.
5:28 A.M. – Ah, a blissful five and a half hours of sleep before my diabetes said “LOL nope” and woke me up. I’m feeling shaky, so I roll over to check my CGM. Sure enough, I’m below my low limit (which is set at 80). My symptoms match my Dexcom graph, so I pop three glucose tablets into my mouth and plop my head back down on my pillow. I should be okay until I get up in a few hours.
…and this is one of the multiple low points I hit in the wee hours of the morning.
7:00 A.M. – Except nope! My CGM’s alarms and my low symptoms wake me up again. I’m frustrated, because it’s beyond annoying to wake up at the same time I normally do for work on a Sunday morning, and especially since it’s because of my diabetes. I reach for a granola bar that contained 22 grams of carbs (way more than I needed for my correction) and wolf it down. I toss and turn for the next hour. I can’t fall back asleep because it feels like my CGM won’t stop alerting me to what my blood sugar’s doing. It’s almost 8:00 A.M. when I decide to take a small bolus, because I definitely over-corrected for the last low.
9:30 A.M. – I get up for real and start my day. Miraculously, I test my blood sugar and it’s 148 mg/dL. I thought it would be worse but I guess the single unit of insulin I took did its job.
This is a night in the life of a PWD. This is what it’s like to have a chronic illness that doesn’t sleep. This is what it’s like to feel out of control of your own body.
And this is why I think french fries are evil – because they’re fatty, slow-releasing but high carb little jerks.
I rolled over onto my stomach and groggily opened my eyes. I checked the time – 1:30 A.M. I felt beads of sweat form on my forehead and back. I kicked my blankets off my body just as I heard my CGM vibrate: five urgent, successive buzzes, a grating sound. I knew what it meant without looking at the screen. My blood sugar was low, and I had to do something about it.
Low blood sugar is never fun, but especially when it happens in the middle of the night.
Blindly, I groped around in the dark, my arm hanging off my bed as I searched the floor for my purse. Once I located it, I rummaged through the inside, looking for a miniature box of raisins that I knew would boost my blood glucose up. I found them and ate them quickly, sitting upright in bed. As I chewed, I registered the sensation that occurs once in a blue moon with these middle-of-the-night lows…
…Raging hunger.
It’s that feeling that you have when your blood sugar gets below a certain point.
That feeling of utter starvation.
That feeling that deprives you of good common sense.
That feeling that forces you to get out of bed, even though the rational part of your mind just wants you to go back to sleep.
Damn it. I’ve succumbed to it, again.
It’s not like this happens every time I have a low at ungodly hours of the morning. In fact, it probably only happens to me four or five times throughout the year. Maybe because I fight against it so hard, since I know that it’ll lead to nothing but high blood sugar and regret.
These thoughts cross my mind, but it’s fleeting. I make my way down the stairs, pausing to grab my bathrobe to keep me warm (the sweating will stop soon and it will be replaced by nonstop chills). Hey, at least I have enough logic at this moment in time to remember the BATHROBE of all things!!!
I turn the light on in the kitchen, blinking rapidly to clear the sleep from my eyes. And then I raid the cabinets.
Fistfuls of Smart Food popcorn are devoured one minute, and in the next, I’m swallowing spoonfuls of crunchy peanut butter (my dear, delicious vice). I take a pinch of Parmesan from the fridge and a tiny tower of Toasteds crackers to complete my smorgasbord. I wash it all down with sparkling water and remove myself from the kitchen before I can do any more damage.
I don’t know what’s more sad – the fact that I gave in to these carnal hunger pangs even though I knew my blood sugar would be fine after having the raisins, or that my snacking was absurdly out of control for 1:30 in the morning. Truly, the knowledge that I must’ve consumed close to 400 calories – roughly how much I eat at lunchtime each day – was disgusting to me.
I could blame it on my lack of self-control. I could blame it on the early morning hours and my sleepy state. I could blame it on the peanut butter for being so addicting.
But instead of beating myself up for a snack attack in the witching hours, I’ll just accept it happened and blame it on the hypoglycemia for striking me when I was vulnerable. It happened, it’s over, it’s time to move on and try harder next time.
Hugging the Cactus 