Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Process of Elimination

The other night, my blood sugar was a little high after dinner (12.9)

I had eaten out and had to guess the carbs so it wasn't a huge surprise. I took a correction bolus to bring it back down and carried on.

Two hours later, I checked again before going to bed. I was 12.2.

Very weird. But I figured I had eaten a large meal so it was probably taking longer than usual to digest. I took another correction and went to sleep. It was 11pm.

I woke up at 1am feeling worse than awful. My mouth was so dry I could hardly swallow the water I gulped and my brain was so fuzzy that it took a minute to figure out that I needed to check my sugar. I fumbled for my glucometer, fumbled with the strips and fumbled as I tried to match up the drop of blood on my fingertip with the little spot on the strip that sucks it up. After all that fumbling, the number 15.9 jumped back at me.

What the hell!??!

I took my third correction, chugged two glasses of water and lay back down to wait for things to start to drop. I ran through the options in my head:

  • I'm getting sick
  • my period is coming and wreaking havoc
  • there was an air bubble in my tube and I didn't get the insulin I thought I was getting
  • there is a kink in my cannula (which I've read happens to a lot of people but has never happened to me)

I patiently waited an hour. I didn't want to fall asleep so I lay on my back (which is guaranteed to keep me awake) and floated for a bit. An hour later I checked.

I was 17.8.

Frak!

I climbed out of bed and headed to the washroom. I checked the tube for air bubbles but all looked fine. I pushed on my infusion site so see if anything felt weird. How does one know if their cannula is kinked? (and how weird does that sound anyway?)

I drank two more glasses of water and took one more adjustment bolus. I was giving it one more hour and then I would bring out the big guns. If things didn't settle soon I was going to have to change my infusion site (which still had about 5 days left in is so that sucks). I was also going to have to start using my old needle just to make sure that I was getting insulin.

I went back to bed (it was now 2:30am), lay on my back and promptly fell asleep.

I didn't wake up until 7am.

Uh Oh.

I was afraid to check - how awful was it and how many hours had I been hanging out near 20?

I checked and saw a 5.5 on my glucometer.

Seriously?

My pump was obviously working fine and there was no kink in my cannula.

Three boluses did nothing and the fourth brought me down to a perfect number without the horrible lows that typically follow rage boluses.

Through process of elimination I have determined that the ridiculously, stubbornly high blood sugars were compliments of...

'member him?

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