Routine Annoyance

I remember once upon a time when I was tired, I used to just be able to walk up the stairs, put on my pjs, crawl into bed and zzz away.

Now, I have a routine. I check my sugar. I fill the syringe. I shoot myself. I take two prescription pills from two bottles, then another one from a pack. I fill my little glass of water on the nightstand and make sure my 4:30am pills are in their case and my dual alarms are set (one for the pills, one for the regular wake-up time).

Then there are the nights when I realize there isn’t enough insulin in the bottle or pen and I have to get another one from the fridge. There’s nights I do everything downstairs, and nights I want to go to bed early, but it’s too early to do the insulin shot, so I haul everything upstairs (and forget to bring it back down). I run out of alcohol swabs in the smaller container and have to dig in the bigger container to get more. Same with syringes. Same with test strips. Some nights I’m a little lower than I want to be to last through the night and I force-feed myself graham crackers or Nutrigrain bars.

It seems like I spend 15-20 minutes a night just getting ready to go to bed, and there are times, like last night, when I just really, really wanted to pull back the covers and forget everything else. I was tired, I didn’t feel great, I wanted a pillow and a dog and no insulin and no pills. But there the routine was, and I did it, because I have to.

As always more to come…