One of the ways I control my sugar when it’s been out of hand over several days or when I eat something I don’t generally eat for dinner is, I set my alarm clock for midnight and do a midnight sugar check.
What this allows me to do is adjust my sugar to keep it from rollercoastering too high overnight. If I was eating something that’s got a weird rate of absorption, the numbers usually shoot up between my bedtime test at 9 or 10 and my midnight correction (unless I did a heavy exercise/kickboxing session the night before, in which case it spikes downward). This is why I tend to eat low carb and stick to certain types of foods. When I don’t, I start to rollercoaster, and when you rollercoaster, you have to work fucking hard for about three days in a row with midnight testing and watching what you eat just to get back to your happy numbers.
The funny thing is, that even if I’m eating all right, I will, without fail, jump at least forty points between midnight and 5:45 am when I get out of bed. It’s just how it is. I tested one midnight at 56, another at 68, and I resisted the urge to overcorrect (I did once, and woke up at 140). If I didn’t correct, I’d wake up at 90 or 100 instead of 140.
So, why do a midnight correction if the difference is between 90 and 140? No big deal, right? Well, if I don’t do a midnight correction and I have Chipotle for dinner, I could go to bed at 90 and wake up at 200. Big, big difference.
And yes, I learned all this through trial and error, and every diabetic is different. Your mileage may vary.
The last couple of weeks have been a little stressful, and I’ve been eating crap – going out and eating onion rings and chicken strips, waaaay too many Chipotle burritos (there is a direct correlation between Chipotle burrito consumption and my stress level), and chicken wings and breakfast scramble wraps here at work. Too much weird food, and it triggers a rollercoaster sugar ride, which then affects my mood. Extreme highs and lows wear me out. I feel like dirt. Quite literally, like dirt.
So this week I’m working at recovering from last week’s rollercoaster. I realized I’d taken things too far yesterday, when I was so exhausted and bitchy that all I wanted to do was go home and sleep for ten hours because I found the idea of interacting with people – including my roomies and the boyfriend – really exhausting and annoying.
People find it very funny that I take such crazy control of my sugar, that I work so hard at it, but you know – I’m not a fun person to be around when my sugar sucks. I physically feel really, really bad. If I’m too low, I want to claw people’s faces off. If I’m too high, I’m tired and bitchy all the time and too exhausted to speak to people, who then thing that it’s them who’s done something wrong, when in fact, it’s all about me.
If rollercoastering goes on too long, some of those bad feelings are going to get out, and I’ll start to lash out at the people around me who I love and care about. And after what happened back in Chicago, after knowing just how badly things can go if I’m not running at 100%, I’m committed to taking care of myself to reduce if not eliminate the possibility of me hurting people like that. I hate hurting people. If you can take better care of yourself so that you *and* the people around you benefit, wonderful. To do otherwise isn’t just self-destructive: it’s selfish.
Sure, if you want to be a hermit in a cave and not have anybody care about you, that’s one thing, but if you want to invite people into your life, you must do your best to respect them. You can start by respecting yourself.
And yes, it’s fucking hard.
