Tag Archives: Hypoglycemia

The Highs and Lows of Travel

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My sweet Frankenstein. This is 4th day post my second trip of the summer. He’s over this out of town business.

Travel blog entry

Traveling as a diabetic can be a bit of chore. It has the ability to take away the whole relaxation effect a vacation should have. Your daily routine has been hijacked and either replaced with a full itinerary or days of jam packed with purely unscheduled “you” time.

Once you’ve figured out your typical daily life routine it can be a real pain in the ass to change it. Even if you’re visiting Disneyland, Cancun or Vegas.

I personally know that I can’t really do carbs in the morning unless I get to take a nap at lunch time and am fully allowed to be in a foul mood the rest of the day. But if I’m in New Orleans, I’m probably not going to pass on the obligatory beignets from Cafe du Monde. If I’m beachside at Playa Del Carmen I’ll probably order the margarita that has 97 grams of sugar instead of a fizzy water.

And then there’s the energy output issue. If you sit at a desk all day and you spend your vacation hiking the Grand Canyon your blood sugar will nose dive like a seagull after mullet (the fish, not the hairstyle). Same goes for the opposite. It you have a high stress or high energy job and you plop on the beach for a week you’ll need to pack an extra Novo pen. Even with mindful adjustments there will still be some shit hitting your internal fan.

I’m really not throwing a pity party. Though it does read that way. (It was just a really long opener.)

I recently spent a week detached from most forms of communication and social media. Away from the daily work induced anxiety. That should have made my body completely even out, right? Being in its most relaxed state, eating well, moving around about as much as I do normally and sleeping soundly for 8 hours. Instead, so unfamiliar with all of these sound practices my body freaked out. My blood sugar was low at least twice a day for 4 days. And of course it would rebound to 200 for the full experience.

It was mind blowing to me that my body reacted to the absence of stress and anxiety by tanking my blood sugar. I’ve come to the conclusion that my general state of being is anxious, which in turn causes my body to think I could go into battle or need to run from a wild animal at any moment, so adrenaline is seeping into my veins for absolutely no good reason.

Calm down. Pull yourself together. You are in charge of nothing that comes anywhere close to being life or death matters. So quit telling your insides that story.

We are insanely powerful. As many things as we don’t have any control over, our bodies and their reactions very often are not one. We have an epic amount of influence over our bodies, whether that influence is deliberate or not, and whether the outcome serves or hinders us, may be up to us.

Why would you buy me Gatorade… and other hypoglycemia overreactions

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Why would you buy me…I needed more juice in the fridge for low blood sugars and I forgot to pick it up at the grocery last week. My husband said he would stop and get something. He instead brought back a giant bottle of Gatorade. Dun dun dun! I am not sure if this is a “thing” for anyone else, however he learned that this is a really big thing for me. Especially if when he brings it home I happen to be low and rather emotional.

I was never going to drink said juice to enjoy it, so why does it matter. It matters because hypoglycemia, defined as a medical emergency that involves an abnormally diminished content of glucose in the blood or literally low blood sugar, turns a person into one of the following: a sloth, a maniacal robot, a staring contest extraordinaire or….. a giant bitch. In this case, guess which one I was 😉

At the time, with a blood sugar of 50, it seemed like he had made the worst decision a human being could possibly make and I was fairly certain that he had done so on purpose. (It is amazing what taking 1 more unit of insulin than necessary can do to a person.)

Low blood sugars are a real pain in the ass. From waking up at 2am to make sure you’re not low every night, to having a mid-day emotional break down because you didn’t realize you’re at 50 and you can’t remember you email password, lows blow.

Being low is the most emotional part of being diabetic for me. It is the moment when I feel utterly out of control of my body. It feels weak and infantile and foreign and somehow new, every single time. (I understand that when I’m at 307 I’m still technically not in control, but I can at least answer a series of questions and function at a normal level. If I’m at 37 things are a different story.) This vulnerability is the worst part. Not knowing when it’s going to happen, or what miscalculation is going to cause it to occur, can be debilitating if you let it.

My small personal triumphs in fighting the hypoglycemia hellion have been: waking up a 2am (not a real triumph), eating late at night (I know, I know, everyone says it’s awful), and calming down (the most difficult of all). Small but mighty(ish) triumphs.

Dancing with diabetes

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I have been a dancer since before I was diabetic. The first question I asked upon diagnosis was if I was able to continue dancing or not. (My Type 1 diabetic grandmother reminded me of this days before she passed as a constant reminder of needing to live the hell out of my life!)

SONY DSCAs a dancer and a diabetic, this balance has been rather difficult. As a child I sat in the front of the room chewing Starburst candies during ballet rehearsal and as a teenager sipped Gatorade at football games and band rehearsals. In college I gulped down cereal bars and now I quickly chew up fruit strips. Oh how we have evolved 😉

No matter the saving grace substance of the year, the problem will never change or cease to exist. Low blood sugars are a reminder, that in fact, no matter how hard I attempt to muscle up my emotions and put-togetheredness it doesn’t matter. Nature will still get the best of me and pretty much always win. And that’s okay.

Not in a glorious or “it’s beautiful because it’s part of nature way”, but in a “I will survive hey, hey!” way. Fuck diabetes. And having to shoot 16 ounces of orange juice at 6am. And wake up at 2am to make sure I don’t need to. And plan when exactly I’m going to eat lunch so I can shoot up 45 minutes before.

It’s okay in the kind of way that it has to be. And that’s not a pity party. No one should feel sorry for or give a furrowed brow look to their diabetty friend. Give them a wink,  a hug and a cup’o’juice at the moment and maybe a glass of wine at the end of the day. They got this.

Hello there ;)

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I’ve never blogged before and I still am 99% uncertain about doing so, realizing I will be the only person to read it. However, maybe at the least it will make me feel fancy to read my own thoughts online instead of scrawled on paper. I’ve been a Type 1 diabetic for 17 years. I’m a dancer. I’m married to a kind, silly, wonderful man. I’m the mother to the coolest black cat this universe has ever seen. I’m an arts admin. I love to cook and make smoothies and drink wine. I will revel in/bitch about/expand on/run in circles around all of the above.

Please stick around and enjoy the bitching, sharing and whining that will ensue on this Diabetiblog 🙂

LIKE

I love driving in the rain. It makes me feel dramatic…. in a non-over the top kind of way. It feels a little cinematic and a little bit like something really exciting is about to happen.

Frankenstein is our cat…or more like our son. I love this cat to a sick level. But he’s great. He fetches paper balls and receipts and anything that makes noise. The downside is that he steals money out of wallets/purses. He is my child and don’t tell me otherwise. I don’t want human babies so this is my equivalent. He’s adorable and you know it.

My husband. If it weren’t Chris Miller I’m not sure where I would be. He is the best carer and helper and husband and partner I could ever imagine. I’m so happy to find a man who loves to yell at the top of his lungs at Texans games, cry a little at my dance performances and think really hard about sermons at church, books he reads and difficult subjects we discuss.

My family.  My immediate and extended family could kick your family’s ass. From my awesome mama bear who is my biggest cheerleader and advocate I could ever ask for no matter what I do, to my father who taught me that it’s always okay/best practice/therapeutic to show your feelings, to my sweet, sweet brother who loves unconditionally at such a young age, I am supported by a line of people who give and share and know the worth of a giant hug and a kind word.

DISLIKE

Crying. I hate crying. Regardless from a baby, a child, myself, especially a friend/family member. It always feels weird and I feel like I cried too much as a kid to deal with it well as an adult. I was a giant crybaby. GIANT.

Glitter and Bows. You look stupid. Whether you’re an adult or a child, you look dumb if you’re covered in glitter or are wearing a bow larger than the size of the palm of your hand. Sorry to disappoint, but it’s a valid statement.

Ridiculous blood sugars. Today I woke up with one of my daily morning alarms at 6am to check my blood sugar only to find it was at 49. I had a cup of juice and woke up 2 hours later to a blood sugar of 200. Really? No one wants to start their day with a swing of 150 points.