Thursday, September 25, 2008

My Body Doesn't Know

So I’m still working through those highs. There’s no logical explanation for why all of a sudden I was waking up at 134 and shooting to 185 after eating one carb four hours prior. (I usually wake up around 95 and one carb unit does not make me break 180.)

I’m not sick. It’s not that time of month. I’ve got the usual amount of stress. I’ve been exercising. I changed my meter. I changed my strips. I changed my injection site. I started a new bottle of insulin. No difference.

So I started creeping up my insulin doses. I do one shot of Lantus nightly, then control my sugar during the day strictly by what I eat—no more insulin. I was at 36 units in a 1/2cc syringe. Now I’m up to 43.

It’s a tricky business with the Lantus. Since I only do the one nightly shot, there’s no chance for me to correct if I didn’t give myself enough insulin. And if I gave myself too much, I just have to eat constantly until I can drop my dosage later that night.

I inch up my doses unit by unit, waiting to see if it will get rid of my highs, without giving me the lows. It’s working so far; I haven’t seen a number over 140 in the last couple days. I also haven’t seen more than one or two numbers under 100. And I’m eating a really constricted carb diet (and lots of cheese and salmon and other non-carb things). I’ll probably inch up another unit or two over the next few days and see if I can’t get my range a little closer to where I like it, and where I can eat a normal meal again.

I get a little freaked out when I have to go over 40 units of insulin. I don’t know why. My syringe holds 50 units and I’ve pledged not to have to go to the next size syringe. The more I go over 40, the closer I get to having to buy that bigger syringe.

But I got a good piece of advice that I’m trying to keep in my head whenever I suck back the plunger: “Your body doesn’t know how many units of insulin it’s getting; it only knows it’s getting the insulin it needs.” Units ain’t nothin’ but a number.

I also feel a little sense of doom when my sugars go high and stay high and the only thing that drops them is more and more insulin. You’d think that after five years of being officially diagnosed, I’d be completely over that “Maybe it was a misdiagnosis thing and I’ll magically wake up one day and be done with it all.” But obviously, my body likes the whole “give me insulin” trajectory its on and has no intentions of giving it up. A not-so-subtle reminder to me that the whole diabetes diagnosis thing was obviously not a lab mix-up.

So. So. So. I’m making peace with everything…again. For those of you out there who’ve had diabetes a whole lot longer than I have: How many times do you have to reconcile with yourself and your diabetes before it’s a done deal? Or will I always, every now and again, be throwing up a white flag?

As always, more (insulin) to come…

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been running high lately as well with little reason. At first I got upset that I had to up my basals to 120%, then 140%, and now at 160%. I was like wow, so much insulin. But then I have to remember that as long as my numbers get better, that's what matters. Glad to hear you're finally heading back down. =)

Araby62 (a.k.a. Kathy) said...

It's never really a done deal, hate to say. If it's not the BG levels, it's a complication, or some other setback unrelated to D, that makes your self-care routine harder. You just have to roll with it and keep trying.

Good luck!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like it's time to add a rapid-acting insulin to your routine. Once you do several shots a day to control your blood sugar, you will no longer question whether or not you're diabetic.