Thursday, January 15, 2015

The Diabetes Gods Have Gone to Florida

I probably should not say this out loud. And I really shouldn't write it in a blog.

But I'm going to anyway.

Diabetes management has been feeling rather easy lately.

Like remembering to brush my teeth or doing laundry kinda easy. The kind of thing you have to do but it's so routine that you just do it without really giving it much thought.

I'm not sure what is responsible for this little diabetes management nirvana but I'm pretty sure it's not just one thing.

It's probably the fact that I have been exercising regularly for weeks now, never missing more than one day in a row. Exercise has always been key in keeping the BG numbers down.

It's probably the fact that I have been a little more careful with what I eat.

It's probably the fact that it's January in Canada and the diabetes gods have up and left for Florida to enjoy a few weeks of sunshine and golf.

Whatever the reason(s), it's been nice.

It's been nice to have fairly stable numbers.

It's nice to bolus for breakfast and watch my blood sugar do what I think it will do.

It's nice to correct a high blood sugar and watch it float down nicely to a reasonable number rather than crash land into a major low.

It's nice to have my bedside fig newton stash go stale before I finish them because I have not been having night time lows in a while. And, when I do dip below 4.0, I can take two Dex 4s and it seems to be enough to get me  back in range.

Another trick that I've been using lately is one that I never made much use of before. Temp basals. Instead of stopping lows that I know are coming with food, I have started preventing them with a strategic lowering of my basal insulin.

In other words, if I'm heading to bed and notice that my blood sugar is on a slow trend downward AND I just came back from CoreFit, I can pretty much guarantee a low in a few hours. I used to deal with this by eating an extra snack before bed.

Now, I turn down my insulin by 20-30% for a few hours.

It works. No high. No low. No pre-bed snack that I don't want to eat because I'm still full from dinner.

Diabetes is a disease of subtleties. If you try to deal with it with a heavy hand, it fights back with a heavier one. If you are gentle and kind with it, it usually responds in kind.

(My guess is that the diabetes gods will jump on the first plane back from Florida as soon as they read this post and  I will be writing another blog in a week or so about the horrors of blood sugar roller coasters. Still though, it's important to celebrate the diabetes victories as they come. And the last few weeks have definitely been victorious) 

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