Full-Time Diabetic, Part-Time Mad Scientist.

It's been a stressful last few weeks. November brought on an onslaught of new barriers to my tiny Diabetes-world bubble. With the welcoming of my 19th birthday in October I found myself suddenly thrust into the mysterious-pseudo-medicaid twilight zone. It was a grey zone filled with odd, confusing and scary terms such as "cost of share" in which I found myself utterly unprepared.
When I heard the news, I glanced with a nervous swallow at my minifridge, which had essentially become the home base of my day-to-day "let's not let Diabetes kill me" operation. My internal calculator did up the math in my head to try and count just how long my insulin could last me in the event that I could not get more for a while. And test strips - what about test strips? I thought of the 5 times I day I liked to test, now seemingly more like a luxury and less like a necessity. Could I cut back? Inwardly, I challenged myself and thought that maybe I could be a successful, saavy and test strip-thrifty Diabetic, too.

I'm not saying it's permanent, but believe it or not, it's been a blazing success. I've essentially reduced my testing to 1-2 times a day just to see how good I am at controlling my sugar by sense and hyper carb-awareness alone. The last week has gone a bit like this:

I wake up in the morning, courageously assume that both because I tested my sugar before bed last night and it read normal and because I am, in fact, not dead or going into seizures or ketosis that I'm hovering reasonably normal, and then have breakfast. I usually eat oatmeal or cream of wheat, which typically breaks down nice and slow and doesn't cause a sharp spike like my now sworn-off Recees Puffs did. After bolusing I go to class, go to work, grab a piece of Candy from Amy's desk (bolus 1-2 units), go to lunch, give myself 3-4 units for my salad and any extra depending on what kind of candy I snagged or if I feel I overdid it a little too much on the carbs that morning, stay hydrated, then go back to class. I have a snack after my last class of the day at 2:30, then go to dinner and give myself about 6 units to cover both dinner and any residual slight-high I might have had from my snack that afternoon. Then I have a snack in the evening, bolus for it but undershoot just a little to avoid nighttime lows, and test before bed. Just to show you, here's a complete list of my sparse readings from the last few days:

11/11 8:21 PM: 121 mg/dL

11/10 7:47 PM: 184 (A work day, so consequential little monitoring of sugar).

11/9 9:32 AM: 151

11/9 1:14 AM: 282 (Ok, I was a little high here, so I bolused to bring myself back in range, then checked in the AM - this was because of the cookies we baked at the apartment).

11/8 12:44 PM: 81

11/8 9:19 AM: 237 (Too high - just beginning this experiment and, a few days in, it's a work in progress).

11/6 8:29 PM: 119

11/5 6:40 PM: 169

11/5 12:52 AM: 172

11/4 12:10 AM: 133

My seven day average is 168.

BAM. I feel like a regular mad scientist. Or maybe the nerdy side of my Biology major is just now starting to swallow me whole. Or maybe I'm just a saavy, test strip-thrifty Diabetic.
It's not perfect, and there is of course the worry that I may just be missing the high readings by simply not testing them. That's true. But I'm definitely pleased with myself - I feel like even if I don't continue this "experiment" of testing my blood sugar sparcely that I've learned a lot just over the span of this week alone. I've learned to be more in-tune with my body, recognizing the signs of an oncoming high as it starts (dry mouth and I know almost immediately that  my sugars are going up) and experience very, very few lows. I've also learned to keep careful track of what I eat and hold myself accountable for all of it. When I think clearly about it and remember it, I always bolus for it, and in theory that in itself should keep my sugars normal. I've also encouraged myself to make the healthy choices that I know are better for me (i.e. NO RECEES PUFFS) to avoid surprise highs. For the most part, I feel great, my sugars are showing steady readings and things are going well, so that's what I figure is important. Therefore, we'll see where this goes.

I would like to note, however, that for Thanksgiving all bets are off - that's going to require practically 24 hours of constant monitoring if I'm going to successfully pull off the biggest nightmare of every Diabetic's year. Am I ready for it? Yes. It won't be a repeat of last year. Armed with better sense of my body and what it's telling me about my sugars, I'm confident that I can succeed this time!