Sometimes I picture Dexter like a night in shining armour. He protects me. He keeps me safe from the diabetes monsters. He watches over me while I sleep and yells at any sign of danger.
Other times, Dexter is more like a puppy that has completely destroyed the living room couch and is sitting innocently in the kitchen when you discover the mess.
What?!? Me??
And the only reason he's still alive is because I somehow manage to hold on to the memory of the times when he has protected and cared for me.
On Friday, Doug and I went golfing with some friends. We walked all 18 holes, had dinner at the club and then drove home. My blood sugar during the game was pretty stellar. Thanks to a reduction in my basal rate and a well-timed Larabar, I hovered between 6 and 9 the entire time.
I ordered the curry chicken with basmati rice and naan bread for dinner. I bolused for most but not all the carbs because I figured those four hours of walking would catch up to me.
We enjoyed dinner, came home and settled on the couch for an hour of West Wing before bed. I bolused for six squares of chocolate to enjoy during the show and checked Dexter every five minutes to see when my blood sugar would start dropping so I could enjoy the chocolate.
Enter crazy puppy covered in couch stuffing.
My blood sugar when we got home at 8pm (we had a rather late dinner) was 10.0. By 8:30 it was 14 and by 8:45 it was 16. Dexter is set to alarm once I hit 10 and keep alarming every fifteen minutes until I drop below 10 again. He was having a fit on the table.
I bolused despite the fact that I still had a ton of insulin in my system from dinner. I also checked the site to make sure it wasn't leaking (it wasn't).
By the time the show ended at 9pm, I was 20 and still climbing. I was also feeling pretty awful. I put my chocolate squares back in the cupboard for another night. I checked the infusion site again (no problem), checked for air bubbles (none), and double-checked that I had indeed taken insulin for my dinner (I had). I also double checked my blood sugar on my glucometer in case Dexter was playing a joke on me. It matched up right to the decimal point.
Despite feeling exhausted from our golf game, I couldn't go to bed so I took another bolus, stretched out on the couch and tucked Dexter in beside me. I dozed off for fifteen minutes until he buzzed. I was still 20 but no longer climbing so I figured the insulin was kicking in. I dozed again for fifteen minutes until he buzzed me awake again. Still 20. Damn.
Doze, buzz, check, bolus, repeat until 11pm. I was still hovering between 19 and 20. No signs of a faulty site but no signs of any blood sugar drops either.
Fine!!
I bit the bullet and changed my infusion site and filled a new reservoir with fresh insulin just after 11pm. I took a full correction bolus for a blood sugar of 20. For me, that is 3.6 units. With the other 7 units that were supposedly coursing through my system, I now had enough insulin in my body to probably kill me twice.
I settled back on the couch knowing that Dexter would keep alarming every 15 minutes until I got back down to 10.0 again. No point in keeping Doug up too.
We settled into a routine where I dozed between alarms and woke up to check. After fifteen minutes I had already dropped to 18.5. Within 30 minutes I was down to 17. Every fifteen minutes I was at least one number lower. Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.
When I hit 12.0 I headed upstairs. It was almost 1am and I figured there would only be one or two more alarms from Dexter before I dropped below 10.0. That was exactly correct and, thirty minutes later I drifted into a grateful, uninterrupted sleep. I woke up a few times on my own and saw that I had dropped from 20 to 6.5 and then settled there for more of the rest of the night.
My last correction bolus was the only one that seemed to work. I have no idea where those other 7 units went but I keep waiting for a rogue pocket of insulin to explode under my skin and send me plummeting into the blood sugar depths. It's been two days and I'm still leary of touching where the previous infusion site was in case there is a rogue pocket of insulin hiding there.
As for Dexter, he buzzed every fifteen minutes from 8:00pm on Friday night until almost 2am on Saturday morning. I was grateful he kept waking me up and yet I was ready to throttle him at the same time. He was minutes away from execution.
I'm guessing he was feeling roughly the same about me.
Would that woman just get her damn blood sugars under control so I can get some sleep!!
The next morning he was quiet and stoic with a lovely flat line on his screen. I looked like I had survived a rather rough night on the town.
And thus concludes anoother chapter in Céline and Dexter's diabetes adventures. Not one I ever want to read again.
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