Living with Dianabetes

Last week Friday, I went to dinner with some friends, we met up around 7:30pm. We went to a sushi place, we placed our order, ordered drinks and when I reach for my pump to pre-bolus…..BAM!!! I noticed that I only have 27 units left of insulin! Eeek!

I had ordered one beer and one roll of sushi, an albacore roll. The sushi roll has rice in it so it is going to have carbs and my beer also has carbs. As soon as I saw how many units of insulin I had left, 1,234,834,283,698 thoughts flew through my mind. Yes, us diabetics can have that many thoughts!

Let me give you some insight: For every 1 gram of carb, my pump’s settings are set to give me 4.2 units of insulin (I stick to that carb ratio, 1:4.2, because that is what my body needs) and my background insulin (which basically just means the insulin my pump is giving me 24/7) is 66 units of insulin in 24 hours so that means every 1 hour I am getting 2.75 units of insulin. According to Google, my albacore roll is roughly 57g carbs which means I’ll be using 13.5 units of insulin + I had ordered a beer which is roughly 13g carbs which means I’ll be using 3 units of insulin = 16.5 units of insulin for my dinner (one roll and one beer).

So if I bolus for my dinner this is what it would look like:

27(units of insulin in my pump)-16.5 (units needed to bolus for my dinner) = 10.5 units (of insulin remain).

Let’s say dinner is about 2 hours so 2.75+2.75 (background insulin) = 5.5 units of insulin

So if I only had the one roll, one beer and dinner was 2 hours long that means I would have 5 units of insulin left.

Side note: Everyone’s insulin needs are different so there are people who have a higher ratio and others who have a lower ratio. There is NOTHING wrong with you for having different insulin settings from someone else and you are NOT a bad diabetic, it simply means your body needs more insulin.

Back to my dinner story!

I started thinking that I should have checked my pump before I left the house, I should have brought my supplies to change out my reservoir, I should have brought up a back up insulin pen, I shouldn’t have ordered the roll and should have ordered a salad instead, I should have ordered water and not beer, I should have this, I should have that, I should have, I should have, I should have, why didn’t I? Basically I was beating myself up and felt like a bad diabetic. This has happened to me before so I also thought to myself, “haven’t you learned yet?!” All these thoughts flashed through my mind in a matter of seconds.

I didn’t have an outwardly reaction and I honestly didn’t think any of my friends noticed and I did my best to contain myself because I was at a dinner with friends and there was nothing I could do except maybe excuse myself from dinner and go home but home was also 40 minutes away and it had been a few months since I had seen my friends.

In that moment I made the quick decision to not bolus for anything so that I can still have enough for background insulin to last me the whole night. Was that the best/smartest idea? Who knows! LOL I think that sometimes being a diabetic is similar to having two right answers and needing to chose the best right answer! And sometimes we don’t get that answer right and sometimes we don’t know it until after the fact.

I’ve come a long way with being kinder to myself regarding my diabetes management and putting at ease my thoughts and worries so despite of my insulin situation, I was still able to enjoy myself, enjoy my food, enjoy my beer and enjoy time with friends.

I didn’t check my pump until after dinner and I was holding steady in the 180s but I know that with rice, my blood sugar was going to start rising over the next two hours. After dinner, we felt like we still needed more time to talk/catch up and I didn’t want to leave so I made another decision to stick with the group. We walked to our friend’s house and we stayed there till almost 11:30 pm. Then I drove my friend to her house where my husband was hanging out with her husband and we stayed another hour or so. At this point, I already knew my blood sugars were high and didn’t feel like checking since there was nothing I could have done about it. I was able to stay in the present moment and I had so much fun.

We got home around 1:15am, I checked my blood sugar and it was at 293. I didn’t beat myself up about it, I wasn’t mean to myself and just saw the number matter-of-factly. I proceeded to change my infusion set since I obviously had already run out of insulin and did a correction before going to sleep.

The above scenario, as I briefly mentioned earlier, has happened to me more than once. I think its because I am a baby diabetic and diabetes is not always at the forefront of my mind even though its a huge part of me. It’s always a reminder to myself that I am more than my diabetes and that one night of bad blood sugars doesn’t mean I am a bad diabetic, it’s not enough for me to make me feel badly about myself and definitely not worth losing out on a fun night with my friends.

I do recognize and am aware that I need to be better and do better but then again, I’m only human and no one is perfect 🙂

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I saw an endocrinologist in December 2019 and was given the diagnosis for Type 1 Diabetes after living my life as a Type 2 Diabetic for 9 years.

My endocrinologist asked how I wanted to manage my type 1 diabetes and I said I wanted a pump. She said my lab results would need to indicate the need for a pump so she said she would order the needed labs and we would go from there.

Once I received my true diagnosis, I felt a sense of peace. For so many years, I blamed myself for not being able to manage my sugars, for not being able to have an in range A1C, for trying so many different types of diets and workouts and none of them working for me or my sugars, for delaying going to the doctor’s office because I couldn’t take being judged for not managing my diabetes and being lectured on the consequences that come with uncontrolled diabetes management. After 9 years, my body was finally getting what it needed and I felt relieved.

My lab results did indicate that I qualified for a pump so I received pump training February 19, 2020, two months after being diagnosed with type 1. During the waiting period, I was injecting insulin via insulin pens so I was happy to hear that I was going to have pump training since injecting insulin was painful at times. Pump training
happened at home and my mom was with me. The lady was super nice and was showing my mom and I the tools I was going to use for my pump. She went through each step of changing my infusion set and had me fake practice. She said I would eventually get a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) as well but the first step was getting this part down.

The training lasted about an hour or so and we thanked her for her time and she left. I remember sitting back down at the table with my mom, looking down at everything I needed for the pump and a wave of emotions and an overwhelming feeling washed over me and I started crying. My mom hugged me, cried with me and that moment reminded me of the time when I had been diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic 10 years prior.

I remember my dad getting home and seeing us with puffy faces and red eyes and asked what had happened. I shared with him how I was feeling overwhelmed, started crying again and he hugged me too and said it was going to be okay. A few months went by and I started getting better at changing my infusion set. I no longer needed to watch a YouTube video on how it was done and was able to do it a lot faster.

Now, using my pump is second nature. It’s almost as easy as breathing. With each passing month, I am learning more about my pump and how to use it to its fullest potential. But that type of education and learning didn’t come from a doctor or healthcare professional, it didn’t come from the reps of my pump. It came from me talking to other diabetics, following diabetics on Instagram, informing myself, educating myself, advocating for myself, having a desire to learn more so I can get better at managing my diabetes. Are some days hard? Heck to the mother effin yes. But do I give up? Nope. I might take a break here and there but then I get back on the horse and keep going.

We all have choices even when we think we don’t. I have the choice to stop taking care of myself. I have a choice to take breaks. I have a choice to be diligent or not. I have a choice to try or not. I have a choice to pre-bolus or not. But every day, I am making the choice to take care of myself, to take breaks when I need them, to do my best, to pre-bolus and carb count. Every day I am choosing to be better and do better.

With that type of mindset, I know I am and will be unstoppable. And this translates to all the other areas of my life. With my work, my career, my finances, my relationships, my marriage, the foods I eat, the exercises I do, the way I talk to myself. We all have choices and we are responsible for the choices we make. There are many external factors of course that can influence our choices but at the end of the day, we are the ones making the final decision. We are accountable for our actions and the decisions we make.

We all battle something everyday but we are all still here. You are here. You are important and worthy of choosing to help make your life better. Every day, every hour is a new chance to make better choices. Today, I choose to continue taking care of myself so I can continue to celebrate and enjoy life. I choose to continue to advocate and learn so I can better manage my diabetes.

If you’re struggling with something, anything, reach out for help because you’re not alone even if you think you are or feel that way.

Living with Dianabetes

The Struggle of Eating Out

Diabetes I Diagnosis continued…