In case the title of this post is less than self explanatory, let me begin by saying UGH. Last night was awful, let me repeat, AWFUL.
The going out to celebrate my sister’s birthday was wonderful, fantastic, awesome and fun.
We met at Red Lobster and I greeted Jennifer, my older sister, Matt, my awesome techy brother-in-law, Caroline, and Christopher, my adorable niece and nephew. Caroline was staring in rapture at the lobsters, crying, “Lobsters! I want to eat the lobsters!” And Christopher was asking when he could play Angry Birds again on Jen’s iPhone. I just love kids. It was too funny. We made our way to the table. I had a card and a bouquet of daisies in hand for Jennifer and one humorous waiter stopped and asked, “Flowers? For me?” “Just for you,” I told him, grinning ear-to-ear.
We sat down, and a very charismatic waiter came over, gave us menus and asked us what we’d like to drink. Jen and I both ordered un-sweet tea (yay! I wasn’t alone!) And we looked over the menus. I was pretty free to eat any of the fish I wanted; turns out both of us had done our research looking over the nutrition facts on the menu online and most of the fish dishes had no more than 10 carbs. Lobster had the least, but, well, that was a little out of a poor high school/college student’s price range. Either way I was happy, though, because this even left me room for croutons in my salad and a cheddar biscuit! (Be excited. This is exciting for me.)
I decided on the broiled flounder (10 carbs) with broccoli for my side, and it came with a Caesar salad – I just had them put the dressing on the side. Everyone ordered and Matt presented Jennifer with a present (He’d given her several all day, decorated the house, and made a pancake breakfast for her too; how sweet is that!) Jennifer had wanted a new laptop for her birthday but since that wasn’t affordable at the time (Don’t worry, I will win the lottery someday and get new laptops for all of us) Matt got her a new hard drive, bigger memory and all the new components to basically re-do Jennifer’s laptop and make it better and brand new! I told Matt I needed one of him to follow me at all times, because I am completely technically un-savvy and he is probably better with computers than anyone I know.
Our food came, I gave my insulin shot no problem, and we talked lots. We had the waiter take a picture of all of us and three waiters even came over and sang to Jennifer for her birthday! Overall, it was a great night, and tonight we are celebrating some more, so with all of the tempting birthday cake and ice cream, I am going to have to exercise some serious carb-smart choices and self-control. Can you say “Practice makes perfect”, anyone? (That’s my official cover-up excuse).
However, when I got home, I remembered I had yet to take my Lantus (long-acting insulin) shot. That was no big deal; I could take it now. I prepped the insulin pen (called a “pen” because it literally looks like a pen, at least I assume that’s why) and stabbed myself in my spot-of-choice. I pressed the button. Nothing happened. Usually how the pens work is you dial in the amount of insulin (measured in units) that you want to give yourself, inject the pen into your skin, and then press the button at the top of the pen, which goes down as you press and the insulin is being injected into you. Well, the button wouldn’t go down. It was as if it was jammed.
I’d heard needles can get jammed sometimes, so I removed the needle, took it off, replaced it with a new one, and somewhat half-heartedly had to RE-inject myself. But the same problem occurred. Either I was holding it wrong or pressing the button wrong, or… I don’t know. I managed to get all of the insulin in and the button pressed down all the way, but I noticed quite a great deal of insulin left at the surface of my skin and I knew I probably hadn’t gotten all the units I needed. So I gave myself some more, just in case, but the button still seemed to be having issues and I noticed still quite a bit of insulin on the surface of my skin.
Well this isn’t really a problem when you are using Novolog, the fast-acting insulin. After all, as I have said, Novolog is completely done working after about 2 hours, so if you inject it wrong, just keep an eye on your blood sugars and two hours later you can do a virtual do-over of any mistakes you’ve made.
Lantus is a different story. Lantus lasts 24 hours and if I mess up my dose, my blood sugars could be all over the place for the entire day. This meant that I had to test my blood sugar even more than usual and keep a special eye on it for the entire 24 hours that the messed-up dose lasted. This meant that I wouldn’t be getting much sleep tonight because going to bed with wacked-out blood sugars can be a very dangerous thing to do. So I set my phone alarm for 2am, 4am, and 6am and had my bedtime snack. I tested my blood sugar before bed and it was 124, not bad but a little on the low side. Diabetics are prone to extreme blood sugar lows in their sleep and usually you want a bedtime level of 130 before going to sleep at night. But I turned out the lights and tried to sleep anyways. I found I couldn’t go to sleep. I was worried I hadn’t gotten enough Lantus so my blood sugar would be too high. But I tested my blood sugar at around midnight and instead found it was only 79.
Uh-Oh. I might have given myself TOO much Lantus…
Well this was too low for me to go to bed care-free tonight. Anything below 70 is considered a true-low and can get dangerous. If your blood sugar gets too low you can die, just as if it gets too high you can die as well. So I hated to snack so late at night, but my life was more important than my waistline. I went to the kitchen, grabbed an apple (15 carbs), ate it, waited 15 minutes, and tested my blood sugar again. It was up to about 86. That was still too low for comfort. I went back to the kitchen while chomping on a glucose tablet and got a half-full glass of milk and a chocolate rice cake. My poor blood sugars would probably be too high now, but I would rather them be on the high side than the low side before bed. I tested again; 219. High, but I could go to sleep knowing I probably wouldn’t die of hypoglycemia, at least. This is a legitimate, probably over-paranoid fear of mine nowadays. But try putting yourself in the same situation and see how you react. It’s different that way.
My phone alarm went off at 2am and I shook myself awake. I tested my blood sugar again; 415. Oh goodness that was high. If it’s that high I am supposed to give myself an insulin shot. I struggled with this decision because I really wasn’t sure I wanted to bring my blood sugar levels back down again if I had given myself too much Lantus. I was still afraid it might make them too low. But 415 really was very high; in the end I gave myself the insulin shot, and went back to sleep.
I woke up in a cold sweat, my heart beating fast. I had slept through my 4 a.m. alarm and it was now 4:54 am. I was shaking. My heartbeat echoed in my ears.
My blood sugar was way too low.
Test it right now, the little voice in my head told me.
I tested it: My blood sugar was only 47. I should not have given myself that insulin shot.
I took two of my remaining glucose tablets and ate those. I had left the rice cakes next to my bed just in case of low blood sugars tonight, so I didn’t have to try and walk out to the kitchen while I was low. The dietician had suggested doing that; I was glad I had taken her advice. I ate two rice cakes, but I was still feeling shaky, though well enough to walk to the kitchen. I got a glass of milk again, as well as two small pieces of candy that I still keep stashed away, partly because I can’t bear the thought of never being able to eat candy again and partly for low blood sugar emergencies. Well, this was enough of an emergency for me. There would be no dying on my watch tonight!
My waistline cried *goodbyeeeee* as I munched on my early-morning snacks. But I felt much better. My heart was no longer beating so fast, I was no longer shaking. At 5:27 a.m. I re-tested and my blood sugar was 151. Good. I fell asleep, slept through the 6 a.m. alarm and woke up at 8 a.m. to test my blood sugar for the morning. The results of last night’s hypoglycemic-binging was a very tired Senior suffering from a severe case of Senioritis, a blood sugar of 347 and a whopping 6 units of Novolog before breakfast, but hey, at least I had lived through another night. I gave myself less Novolog because I didn’t want a repeat of last night’s blood sugar, today. I took an early morning bike ride out at the park this morning to fit in my daily exercise and hopefully burn off all of those carbs I ate last night… ugh.
Let’s hope the diabetes-Gods are smiling upon me today and that my insulin pen behaves tonight; PLEASE?!
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