June 19th 2013, AKAThe Black Sheep of Diabetes Days

Today hasn't been the best Diabetes day.

I woke up a little high, in the 190-220 range, so did my correction dose and ate a healthy breakfast of oatmeal. By lunchtime I was hovering at an acceptable 180, and had a sandwich, grapes and a coke zero for lunch. I bolused for that as well as a little extra to get an even better number. When I pulled the pen out of my skin, I noticed some leakback. "Shoot!" I said. (No pun intended!)

"You alright?" Darrien, my roommate Crystal's brother, asked as he heard me and noticed my anxious face. As a side note, every Tuesday I stay at Crystal's house because I work a gig in Columbus at TGI Friday's on Tuesday's. I face paint and balloon twist, and really enjoy the job, but the trip back to Macon from Columbus is scary in the dark. There are no lights, no cell phone reception; really, there is no civilization at all except for a few little towns here and there. It's 90 miles of backwoods and there is no easy way to get there, so I am very grateful to be able to spend the night in Columbus and go back to Macon in the morning!

"I'm alright," I said. "I'll check again within the hour and make sure I'm OK." I thought about giving myself some extra, but didn't want to make myself low, either.

I ended up checking 45 minutes later. I was expecting something a little high - 200's maybe - but was entirely unprepared for what I saw on the screen. A 545 flashed at me and I did a double take. "What? WHAT?? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???" You've got to be kidding me," I yelled out loud. I could NOT fathom how my sugar had gotten that high. Even if I had leaked back, I had had half a sandwich and some fruit; it didn't seem like there could be an earthly way that I could have gotten that high, and I didn't even feel it. Frustrated, I dialed in a whopping 18 units and stuck myself, trying to wrap my head around the conundrum.

In Roberta, about another 30-40 minutes later, I checked again. 242. At least I was coming down, right?

I checked when I got back to Macon as well, and came in at about 239. Novolog finishes its work about 1.5 hours after injection, and so I gave another 3 units (my correction dose is 1unit/30mgdL), stopped by my room at Wesleyan, changed for the gym, at hopped on the treadmill for an hour.

I was determined; if all that didn't bring my down, it would seem that nothing would.

An hour later after I hop off the treadmill Josh calls, and we meet up and head back to my room. I sit on the bed and start to feel a little shaky. I know I am low, and test to find 52. I grab two mini ice cream sandwiches from the fridge (favorite snack), one for him and one for me, and eat that in order to coax my sugars back up. In the meantime I ride the pitiful wave of Diabetes low blood sugar purgatory, contemplating for the next 15 minutes or so how much I despise Diabetes and ruminate on my continuous annoyance with the disease. 

15 minutes later, I'm ok. Life goes on. Josh and I head to Zaxby's for an early dinner, and we order food and sit at the table to wait. I am trembling and I reach up to wipe a wet strand of hair from my face. I feel irritated. I test again, and come in at 56. I sigh, trying to be "cool", but I feel as though I'm going to keel over if I don't get my food soon. Joshua brings it over when our number is called and he might as well be carrying a treasure chest full of gold in that moment, I am so relieved. I gulp down my food and hope that this nightmarish string of high-low-high-low-lows is over for the day. I'm 70 later on but feel few-ish symptoms, and my nighttime snack cures any symptoms I may feel later on. Thankfully.

I feel better, I'm alive, I'm disappointed in how today's numbers turned out, but I am trying hard and do get a lot of good numbers for the most part. I guess today was just the black sheep of Diabetes days. Tomorrow will be better. I'll try harder. I am frustrated, but have to keep moving on. That's how this disease works. Always keep trying, improving, moving forward. Someday I won't have to. Someday I believe they'll find a cure. Listen to me, two years in and I'm already saying that as if it's something I have to believe in order to keep moving on. Someday...

Details, Details, Details.

I sometimes rue the complications that Diabetes creates for me in life more than the act of dealing with Diabetes itself.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that, in comparison, the act of sticking a needle in my skin 5-10 times a day and testing my blood sugar around the clock is simple in comparison to having to actually obtain the insulin, worry if it will be mailed on time, deal with pharmacies, insurance companies that want nothing to do with me, the new health care bill and how it will effect me, whether my future career will be able to support me medically, trying to schedule endocrinologist appointments in Florida when I only come home 2-3 times a year, the thorny issue of my residency and terms more complicated than they should be such as "Medicaid", "Medically needy", and "Share of Cost".

In other words, one of the biggest hassles of having Diabetes lies in the seemingly little issue of the details.

Dealing with blood glucose numbers suck but trust me, if all I had to do was worry about how to give a couple of shots a day, I'd be golden.

My plan when I moved to Georgia was this: change my address, get a Georgia license and registration, apply to the Georgia Medicaid office and bam: Georgia Medicaid, easy and simple.

Hahahahaahahahahahaaha.

How little I knew.

This plan was way more difficult than I thought it would be..... I realized, upon getting to Georgia, that changing my residency would require me to renounce my Florida Medicaid before applying, leaving me with a potentially 60-day long gap of waiting to see if I apply for Georgia Medicaid. And no one at the Medicaid office seemed to be able to tell me if I would actually qualify for Georgia Medicaid - I'd just have to see, and I turned down, I'd have to switch my license and registration (requiring a trip back to Florida) back again, and re-apply, a difficult process in and of itself. Not to mention the change (and upcharge) in car insurance switching my residency would create.... what a mess. Maybe I'm making it out to be more difficult than it really is, but as someone who lives month to month depending on test strips to show up in the mail, the thought of being unable to get medication for a few months fills me with a sort of vague, cold and unknown fear.

Did I want to go to Georgia State for the Doctorate of Physical Therapy Program? Well, yeah, I did. And I could as a Florida resident, but I'd have to pay out of state. So I've had to switch my grad school plans, which does frustrate me. I wish that I didn't have Diabetes, if only so that switching my residency would be an infinitely more simple matter that I could have addressed in a week, versus months of waiting, with far smaller consequences. I could go pretty much any where I want then, but I feel as though with Diabetes my options are more limited than without. I hate to feel barred, limited. But I guess that's just life.
Instead, I decided to look into an old possibility that I had given up a few months earlier amidst my agonizingly slow grad school decision making process; after juggling about 6 different schools, I finally think that I've settled for a very likely contender, which is Mercer University located in North Atlanta. Mercer is a private university, which means I don't need to pay out of state. Private education does come at a cost, however, which is initially what discouraged me. But after looking at the numbers and weighing the possible costs and benefits, Mercer seems like a good choice for me. I have a high chance of getting at least some financial aid, I already have a successful business (aka form of income) practically run out of the Atlanta area, and I know the area decently well. The prospect of Atlanta is scary to me, but I've taken some time to mull it over in my mind the past few weeks and I'm gradually becoming more comfortable with it.... I think....

Ok, I'm still scared. Truth be told, I've become comfortable with Macon. It's cushy, familiar. I don't want to leave that familiarity behind. I hate uncertainty. But trying to envision Atlanta life in my head (granted I get accepted to Mercer) helps, and hopefully in a year I'll be ready to peel myself away from this town and move on to bigger and better things. To get one step closer to my future career!

It's a dizzying prospect, but if there's anything that life has taught me, it's that we people are more capable of handling things than we think.