It's That Time

It's week four of four.  This is the week where I get to enjoy any or all of the following:

• extreme fatigue
• breasts that feel like bowling balls
• weight that goes up by three pounds
• blood sugar that climbs climbs climbs and then crashes.  
• debilitating cramps
• sleepless nights
• nausea
• ravenous hunger
• absolutely nothing out of the ordinary

Some months are fairly benign.  I sleep poorly for one night, I'm a little extra hungry one day but life goes on.  Other months I leave work early because I feel so awful and I crawl into bed with my magic bag and fuzzy socks.  Sometimes my blood sugar takes me for a roller coaster ride and other times it's steady as a rock.

The symptoms are always the same when I get them but it's always a surprise which ones will show up for the party.

I remember one of my appointments at the Diabetes Centre.  They asked me if I had a temporary basal rate I used the week before my period. Ummm...no?

Pre-period blood sugar craziness is pretty nasty when it happens but the randomness of when it happens is just as nasty.  If I set a temporary basal rate every month for the three days before my period I would be in pretty good shape some months and I would be clearing all the juice boxes out of the Superstore the next month as I fought continuous lows.  It's just not worth the risk so I fight the highs when they come and, in exchange, I don't have crazy lows.

Diabetes is predictably unpredictable.

It's also, for the record, annoyingly annoying.

Did I mention it was ridiculously ridiculous?

Funny how one actually adjusts to unpredictability and it becomes, well, almost predictable.

After nine years, I have figured out that my blood sugar will do one of about three things before my period. It will do one of two things during a curling game.  One thing and one thing only during my swim and one of about eight things during a long run depending on the weather, the wind, the time of day and the angle of the sun.

Random predictability.

Also known as crazy-ass crazyassness.

Best photographic representation of diabetes I could find.  

Calm and sedate one moment, completely crazy the next.