Tag: frustrating

8 Things I Hate About High Blood Sugar

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This was originally published here on Hugging the Cactus on April 5, 2019. I’m sharing it again today because this is an evergreen post, the kind that will always ring true for me. These are the things I simply cannot stand about high blood sugar…

High blood sugar, high bg, hypergycemia, sky high…whatever you want to call high blood sugar, it doesn’t change how I feel about it. I hate it. My loathing of high blood sugar is probably not unique among other T1Ds – I’m sure most would agree that it’s the worst – but on a recent and particularly bad day of high blood sugars, I started thinking about why I hate being high so much and it turned into this blog post…which turned into a very cathartic thing for me to write.What do you hate about high blood sugar?

What are the eight things that I hate about high blood sugar? Here they are…

#1: It makes me thirsty. This reference may be lost on some of my readers, but to those who get it, it’ll be wildly funny (or at least it will be in my mind): *Parched Spongebob Squarepants voice* “Waaaaaaaaater! I neeeeeeeeed it!” When my blood sugar is high, I basically turn into that shriveled-up version of Spongebob that appeared in the episode in which he visits Sandy the squirrel’s treedome for the first time. He doesn’t realize that, being a mammal, Sandy doesn’t depend on water like he does to be able to live/breathe. Hence, he struggles throughout the episode to stay hydrated. I bet that if he were dealing with a high blood sugar at the same time, his desperation for water would become much more dire…because let me tell you, I simply cannot drink enough of it when my blood sugar is above 200. This results in many trips to the bathroom, and as I’m sure you can imagine, it’s pretty annoying.

#2: It turns me into a major grump. Nothing kills a good mood quite as swiftly as high blood sugar…I don’t like admitting it, but I tend to snap at people when my blood sugar’s elevated. So really, it’s a lose-lose situation for everyone.

#3: It’s a weight on my shoulders. If my blood sugar is high, I can’t help but wonder what I did wrong to make it so. Did I miscalculate my carbs? Should I have given myself more insulin? Should I have timed my exercise better? Is my insulin pump work properly? The list of questions and possible answers are practically endless, and it weighs heavily on me when I’m dealing with an inexplicable high.

#4: It’s disruptive. When my blood sugar is high for a prolonged period of time, I can’t focus on anything else but that. I’ll do anything and everything I can to take my mind off it and just let my corrective insulin dose go to work, but I can’t help but worry. This can be especially disruptive when I’m trying to get work done at my desk job, or when I’m trying to enjoy a night out with friends. It can suck the joy out of any situation, and that can be incredibly disheartening.

#5: It doesn’t get along with exercise. High blood sugar is weird, because sometimes it cooperates with exercise, and other times it reacts very badly to it. I find that if I workout at 250 or below, my blood sugar responds wonderfully to the movement and it’ll drop my blood sugar down to a better level much faster than insulin. But if I dare to workout above 250, then things can go terribly wrong and my blood sugar will go up even more. I learned that lesson the hard way in college, when I went to a high-intensity spinning class…I was so nervous about going low in the middle of the class that I overcompensated with a pre-workout snack. So over the course of the class, my blood sugar shot up to 300 due to the strenuous exercise coupled with the extra carbs. Not fun.

#6: It makes my CGM wail. I appreciate the alarms on my CGM, but NOT when they go off over and over and OVER again. It feels like my CGM is judging me for being high and it couldn’t be more obnoxious…and I just want to throw my device across the room to get it to shut up.

#7: It prevents me from eating when I’m hungry. I don’t always want to eat when my blood sugar is high, but occasionally, high blood sugar coincides with mealtimes and I end up staring longingly at food while I wait for my blood sugar to stabilize at a better level. Depending on when the high happens and how badly I wanted to eat some food, I can get very hangry (angry AND hungry), which is never a good state of mind to be in.

#8: It’s stubborn. The worst part about high blood sugar is that sometimes, it feels like it takes FOREVER for it to come back down. During the waiting period, anxiety, irritation, and anger are all emotions that can manifest themselves within me. And it sucks. The mental games that high blood sugar can play with me are straight-up cruel, and since a high can be so damn stubbornly slow to respond to insulin, it makes it that much harder to handle…which is why, I can say with 100% certainty, that I hate high blood sugars with a bloody passion.

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8 Things About Diabetes That Make Me Want to Rip My Hair Out

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Life with diabetes can be the opposite of a cakewalk. In fact, it can be so frustrating at times that I seriously consider ripping my hair out due to sheer agitation.

When thinking about the things that drive me nuts about diabetes, I came up with a list of 8 occasions in which I come this CLOSE to losing my freakin’ marbles:

1. When low blood sugars refuse to come up…

2. …And when high blood sugars refuse to come back down.

I’m considering these first two as separate list items because the scariness of a lingering low and the frustrating nature of a stubborn high can be two very different types of “GAAAAAAAAHHHH!” But both can be especially suck-y when you feel and know that you’ve been doing everything right to treat them without experiencing the expected results.

3. Pod and CGM sensor failures.

Oooh, any sort of device failure can be so exasperating any time of day. But they’re worse when they happen at inconvenient times, such as in the middle of the night or during an important conference call. All diabetes technology should work flawlessly at all times, but that’s not always the reality that we live in.

4. Inaccurate results.

I can’t stand when my blood sugar meter or my CGM report false readings. Sometimes, I’ll check my blood sugar two times in a row just to see how close both readings are to one another, and it makes me want to throw my meter across the room when I see that they’re off by 20+ points. Once, I had a reading that was off by more than 50 points! That makes a major difference in how much insulin I give myself in that moment in time, so inaccurate results can really derail my blood sugars for hours after.

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I’m sure you can imagine how entertaining the search results were when I looked up images to go with this blog post.

5. Folds in the adhesive.

Whenever I apply a fresh sensor or a pod, I try to be super careful and make sure that the adhesive sticks smoothly…but despite my best efforts, that doesn’t always happen. Folds in the adhesive are far from the worst thing in the world, but they do make it more difficult for my devices to stick on for the full length of time that I need to wear them, and I usually end up having to add tape around them to reinforce the hold. More tape = more folds = more irritation!!!

6. Unexplained blood sugars.

Anyone with diabetes has been there, done that. You could follow the exact same routine from one day to the next, even eating the same foods at the same times, and get totally different blood sugar results. Or maybe you thought that you bolused perfectly for a meal, only to find out hours later that you’re much higher or lower than you anticipated. Whatever the reason behind them may be, unexplained blood sugars are just obnoxious.

7. Screeching alarms.

Speaking of things that are obnoxious, let’s talk about wailing OmniPod or Dexcom alarms for a hot second. There’s nothing like a resounding BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP to ruin your day!

8. The INSANE costs of our supplies.

Undoubtedly, the thing that most makes me want to rip my hair out when it comes to diabetes is the cost of supplies. I’ve blogged more and more recently about the criminal cost of insulin – since the 1990s, the cost of insulin has increased over 1,200% (!!!) – and I’ll continue to do so until EVERYONE with diabetes can afford this life-saving medication. We never asked for diabetes to happen to us. But it did. And the fact that many people with diabetes have to make sacrifices in order to, well, survive, is simply not okay, and the most infuriating thing about living with this chronic illness.

Do Dexcom G6 Readings Become Less Accurate as Transmitters Age?

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In my unofficial opinion: Yes, Dexcom G6 transmitters lose accuracy as they approach their expiration dates. And I’m not quite sure if I’m the only one who has noticed this, or if others have also experienced this frustrating phenomenon.

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In my unprofessional opinion, yes!

I’m writing this after dealing with a dying transmitter that was showing its signs of decay by 1) losing connectivity with my receiver and 2) reporting inaccurate blood sugar readings. I’ve definitely narrowed the problem down to my aging transmitter, which (allegedly) had one session left before it was set to expire – everything else about this particular sensor session was standard procedure. And guess what else, everything about the entire 10-day session was obnoxious, because it was rare for me to have a single day with both accurate and consistent readings. Ugh!!!

I don’t know what’s more irritating – the signal loss or the inaccuracies. Actually, I DO know what irritates me more than anything else, and that’s the fact that the transmitters don’t seem to last for as long as they’re advertised. It’s just ludicrous, especially when you take into account how much these devices cost.

Many people with diabetes rely on this, and other forms of technology, to effectively manage diabetes. And when the technology can’t be relied on to do its job, we can’t perform our jobs as well. Diabetes is draining enough – is it too much to ask for technology to be trustworthy?

Why is it so Difficult to Order Life-Saving Medical Supplies?

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When it comes to obtaining my diabetes supplies – life-saving pieces of medical equipment – I’ve discovered that it’s not a simple process. It’s not exactly like purchasing something on Amazon with a single click. Rather, it’s a convoluted, head-scratching, infuriatingly long procedure that apparently involves multiple calls to a variety of companies.

As of this writing, it took approximately 4 calls to my endocrinologist’s office, 12-14 calls to Insulet (the maker of my OmniPod insulin pump), 6 or 7 calls to Dexcom (for my CGM supplies), 2 calls to my health insurance provider, and 1 call to Express Scripts just to get everything all straightened away. These calls took place over the course of 2.5 months, and as they grew in frequency, so did my overall frustration and confusion.

The biggest headache was definitely caused by the lack of effective communication between Insulet and my endocrinologist’s office. I needed to get a new PDM, and Insulet’s job was to contact my doctor’s office and get a letter of medical necessity in order to get a PDM shipped out to me. Simple, right?

Why is it so Difficult to Order Life-Saving Medical Supplies_
My call log looked like this for several days in July – so many phone calls to Insulet/OmniPod and to my doctor.

Far from it. About a week after I placed the order for the new PDM, I got an email from Insulet saying that my doctor’s office had failed to return their faxes. I was advised to contact them to determine the delay. When I did, I spoke with a receptionist who, despite my clear explanation of the issue, misunderstood what I was asking for and left me a voicemail to say that she didn’t know what Insulet was talking about seeing as their information showed that I had received a shipment from them. (For whatever reason, she thought I needed more pods, which I did have delivered around the same time that all of this was going on.)

After several more back-and-forth phone calls, I cracked the case wide open: Insulet had the wrong contact information for my doctor. While my endocrinologist hasn’t changed in about a decade, her office location has, and Insulet still had the old one. I felt like an idiot for not realizing this sooner, but then again…why was I the one who was jumping through so many hoops and making so many contact attempts in order to figure out what the hold-up was? It was absolutely ridiculous, but I certainly felt relieved – and satisfied – to have personally solved the mystery.

I wish I could say I had a better experience with Dexcom, but that proved to be similarly headache-inducing. I thought that I was set to receive my supplies after I’d signed a payment plan for a 90-day supply of sensors and transmitters, but when they didn’t show up after a month of waiting, I knew something was wrong. I called Dexcom and discovered that the order, for reasons unknown, just didn’t process, so I had to sign a brand-new payment plan and had my case assigned to a different customer service rep. I was pretty pissed off by the lack of communication, but the one silver lining was that I’d already managed to pay my deductible in full (ha, no surprises there), so my Dexcom supply order would cost me less. Again, it was unbelievable that I never got an update from the company regarding my order’s status, but I did feel a sting of pride in myself for getting it all worked out on my own.

I don’t know why everything about this process is so agonizing. But what I do know for sure is that it seems that the only person I can count on to get my supplies ordered properly, in the end, is myself.

Doing Everything Right and Still Getting it Wrong

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One of the most frustrating things about having diabetes is feeling like you’re finally understanding it, perhaps even mastering it, only for it to lash out at you and make you feel like you don’t know shit about it.

It’s when you do everything right – check and treat accordingly, eat properly, exercise sufficiently – and still get it wrong when your blood sugars don’t behave the way they should.

I really hate when this happens, but I loathe when it happens on vacation…which is exactly what happened to me last week when I was in Maine for a few days.

Things started going awry shortly after I woke up (if only I knew then that I was in for a DAY!!!). I ate breakfast and my blood sugar swiftly started to rise. But I didn’t panic, because that’s what I wanted to happen. We’d be walking all around town for part of the morning and most of the afternoon, so I wanted my blood sugar to be on the higher side so that my chances of dropping dramatically in the heat were lower. I made the right call – soon after we got downtown, I noticed a diagonal down arrow on my Dexcom app. Things were headed in the right direction…or so I thought.

Not long after I spotted the diagonal arrow, I started to feel a little low-ish. Not super shaky or anything, but just a bit disoriented. I decided to pop into my favorite candy store to fill a small bag with treats so I had something sugary to munch on that would prevent a bad low blood sugar.

Those were mistakes number one and two…not consulting with my CGM again before eating candy, and going to town on it because it was CANDY and it tasted delicious.

Doing Everything Right and Still Getting it Wrong

Within a half hour, I was rising up, up, and up. I took a small amount of insulin to correct it, not wanting to be too aggressive and risk a real low. But as I walked around the amusement park with my boyfriend and his family, I just wasn’t coming back down like I thought I would. I lingered in the mid-200s for much of the early afternoon, and by the time we stopped for lunch, I was rage-bolusing to bring my numbers down faster. I even chose a lower-carb lunch option in the hopes that it’d stave off another high blood sugar, but nope, the BG gods were not in my favor that afternoon. As we moved from the amusement park to a brewery (a drastically different change in locale, I know), I bolused once again, and then noticed that the batteries in my PDM were low.

And that actually wasn’t a problem, because I was prepared enough to have spare triple A batteries on me – thank goodness! I took the old ones out, popped the new ones in, and waited for my PDM to come back to life. And it did…but it asked me to input the month, day, and year.

Dammit. THAT’S never a good sign. I entered the information and the system accepted it, and then my pod failed immediately after, which meant that I had to ditch the brewery and the group of people that I was with to get back to the house we were staying at as quickly as possible to put a new one on.

It doesn’t get much more irritating than that.

(Later, I discovered that my PDM’s internal battery was going, and that this behavior would occur every time I replaced the triple A batteries. Needless to say, I’m awaiting a new PDM from Insulet, because it’s just not smart to continue using an aging PDM.)

By the end of this day of turbulent blood sugars and unpredictable medical device malfunctions, I was mentally beat. I felt like I’d been thrown into the roughest of ocean waters and forced to tread water for hours in order to keep my head above the surface. It’s exhausting to know that, when it’s all said and done, I was really trying to do the right things and take care of myself. I was SO DANG PREPARED with those extra triple A batteries, for goodness’ sake! But man, diabetes…just when I think I know it better than anything else, it throws me for a loop and I remember a saying from Professor Mad-Eye Moody of the Harry Potter series (of course I’m talking about Harry Potter again, don’t act surprised): CONSTANT VIGILANCE. I’ve got to be aware of my diabetes at all times. I’ve got to know how to react and when so that my diabetes will remain in my charge – not the other way around.

Grazing: My Bad Habit

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A handful of peanuts here, a couple of slices of cheese there.

A pile of popcorn followed by a spoonful of peanut butter.

A few pretzels and a small smattering of chocolate chips – because chocolate.

These snack combos, as strange as they may be, all describe some snacking behavior that I also refer to as “grazing”. Grazing is all about taking little bits of food when I’m not necessarily hungry. I equate it to eating out of boredom, except I’m not indulging on full meals or anything, I’m simply munching because the food is there and my blood sugar is acceptable enough to the point that I can freely snack without having to bolus, or worry about significant blood sugar jumps later on.

In other words, grazing is a habit I’m trying to break.

grazing

I’m not stupid. I know that the aforementioned foods I choose to graze on contain carbohydrates. Whether trace or moderate, they’re still there. And I choose to ignore them.

I don’t know why. If I want to have a snack, then that’s okay, as long as I take insulin for it. But I guess my rationale for grazing is that I’m taking “itty bitty” amounts of food that will minimally impact my blood sugar, if at all.

Then again…it’s not exactly logical when those small snacks DO wind up impacting my blood sugar. Usually, the spike happens several hours after, and each time I get angry at myself for a) not having enough self-control to resist grazing and b) not taking insulin for it when I do give in to the bad habit.

Nearly 21 years of diabetes and I’m still occasionally blown away by the minutiae of it: how just the slightest smackerels can take a toll on the straight-lined graphs I strive to achieve daily.