Over before it starts

Overdosed on all the carbs!

By the time I walked into the office yesterday, I was ready for the day to be over. Horrendous low on my way in (seriously, I hate the two-hour warm up phase when I put in a new or restart a Dex sensor) and the frenzied, gluttonous consumption of as much glucose as was in my car. (For the record –  two juice boxes and large packet of jelly beans.)

A morning mountain of sugar does not start the day at all well with the overdose of glucose pulsing through my veins turning my muscles to lead and my brain to pulp. And it continued throughout the day, with reminders of the rotten start peppering my day, all the way to bedtime when I found four rogue blood glucose strips stuck to my body. They fluttered like butterflies to the ground when I took off my bra. (That sounds a lot prettier and more delicate than it actually was.)

Hypo mornings are the worst. Especially when they involve the guzzling of the equivalent of my body weight in glucose.

I arrived at work 15 minutes late for a meeting, covered in sweat, hair plastered to my head and my sunglasses skewwhiff on my head. Nothing says ‘I’m-ready-for-the-week-and-to-be-a-smart-sassy-expert-contributor-to-an-important-meeting-with-important-people-and-yes-of-course-I-know-what-I-am-talking-about’ like post-hypo glow.

These days start badly. And don’t end well. I take a ‘begin as I mean to go on, and go on as I began’ approach literally, and figure that if beginning with a carb load suitable for an Olympic marathon runner the day before race day, then I may as well keep it up and compete in my own little Olympic challenge: the carb race.

I mean, why not eat a doughnut or two for breakfast next, right? Or waffles with jam AND syrup AND whipped cream?

And of course, I’ll have morning tea. ‘Biscuits,’ you say? ‘I’ll take six…teen,’ I respond.

Sushi rolls for lunch, because today is not the day to work out how to bolus for white rice and who cares anyway?!

It would be rude to say no to the brownies on the counter of the café next door to the office that I am visiting for the fifth time because caffeine is the only thing that is making me remain upright and remember how to string two words together that actually make sense. (So: ‘Yes, another milky coffee please. And sure, add sugar! All the sugar!’)

Pasta for dinner with more pasta and then add some pasta on the side because carbs, carbs, carbs. And the chocolate chip cookies that the kidlet made over the weekend as treats for her school day lunchbox make excellent treats after dinner for carb-mummy.

And while this is all going on, I am bolusing, bolusing, bolusing; insulin stacking, insulin stacking, insulin stacking. And chasing my tail because of course I end up low and then high and then low.

I know, I know. I didn’t need to keep the high carb day going after my breakfast hypo. But sometimes, when the days starts off going to hell in a handbasket, sometimes, I can’t work out the way (or be bothered) to salvage it. And I wonder what is the point of limiting my carb intake for the rest of the day if the floodgates were jammed open before 9am.

I climbed into bed last night exhausted. Exhausted from the low that started the day, the sluggishness of so much glucose still in my system and a day of peak-and-trough glucose levels that always make me feel listless. I said a silent prayer to the diabetes angels to please, please, please let me sleep through the night and not be up all night weeing out the sugar due to the glucose overdose, or needing to treat a low due to the likely insulin overdose. I pleaded for balance and flat-lines and an absence of alarms.

I woke this morning with the slight hangover the comes from too much sugar and a day on a rollercoaster. Waves of nausea wash lightly over me occasionally, reminding me of the day before. Delicately, I am stepping through the day. Watching my CGM trace, reacting gently, eating cautiously, dosing warily. And cursing diabetes. Completely and utterly inelegantly.

Over before it starts https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3S-dQ-IDvkWGL4OgQpLa9w