In today’s vlog, the day brought me a blood sugar of 400. Watch to find out how the day went. Just click the image below and please subscribe.
Category: High Blood Sugar
Went 62 to 398 in a Few Hours – New VLOG
Today’s vlog is up, so please check it out. It’s the first day of Diabetes Awareness Month, my birthday, and a day where my blood sugar went up over 300 within a couple of hours.
Enjoy.
A Few Day Fever
A couple of weeks ago I was back up in Pennsylvania visiting family. After coming home from my brother’s house where my daughter and two nieces and one nephew were playing for a few hours, I felt extremely tired. I wasn’t sure if it was just the exhaustion of watching 4 kids play and runaround or the lack of sleep was just catching up to me.
I ended up falling asleep around 9-10 p.m. that night. I know that might sound late to some people, but to me, that is early.
The next day I was still a little sluggish but decided to go to the park to meet up with my friend’s kids and I just felt like crap. I was just sitting on the bench watching the kids have fun, but didn’t feel like getting up to do anything.
Ketones
My first thought was ketones. Definitely ketones.
Now, let me give a little history here. In my 14 years of living with diabetes, I have never, ever, checked for ketones at home.
Never.
My mentality has always been to just drink a lot of water when I had a high blood sugar or just felt sluggish with a “normal” blood sugar.
My brother was coming to the park too, so he was going to bring my some ketone sticks to check. Well, as soon as I got home, I checked and I had trace ketones.
I guessed right. That’s why I was sluggish and tired.
But then several hours later I felt warm.
So I checked my temperature.
101.4
Ut-oh.
That’s not normal.
Fever
I went for the Tylenol and hope that the fever broke and I would be ok.
Well, this went on for 2 days. Fever would go away, then come back, then go away and come back with the help of Tylenol.
I didn’t want to take Tylenol for more than 2-3 days so I knew that come Monday morning I was going to the doctor.
Now I know that with type 1 diabetes, you shouldn’t mess around with a fever, but here’s why I did.
No Out of State Insurance
My ACA insurance plan is only good in the state of Florida. I didn’t know that when I chose the plan, but if I went to the doctor or ER in PA, I would be set back a couple hundred dollars, if not more.
I was willing to go to the doctor or ER on the 3rd day if I had to, but I wanted to try and beat the fever.
Luckily, on the 3rd day I woke up and the fever was below 99.1. A few times it crept to about 99.3 that day, but nothing higher than that.
Now, I thought this was weird because I had an appetite, I wasn’t vomiting or feeling like I had to. Just a fever and tired.
I also had trace ketones the whole time this was occurring as well.
I am the type of person that coughs once and freaks out and thinks that something horribly wrong is happening. So I kept freaking myself out that something more serious was or still is going on.
Now that I am back in Florida I have set up a doctor’s appointment for next week to just get a check up and make sure everything is working inside of me.
I know that if you are reading this you are probably screaming through the computer screen or smart phone, that I should have went to the hospital or saw a doctor.
And you are 100% correct. I should have.
But I chose not to, so now I am hoping that it wasn’t anything serious that had long lasting effects on my body.
But we shall find out soon enough.
From a 581 Blood Sugar to 115
Yesterday was not a fun day. Basically, it went like this. Sat in my office chair almost all day, didn’t eat lunch because I completely forgot all about it, before dinner had a 581 blood sugar and before I went to bed it was 115. So what happened in between? I honestly don’t know.
Around 2 o’clock I tested and the meter read 145 and I went right back to work and didn’t even eat anything. I did forget to take my Levemir in the morning, but I didn’t want to take the morning dose so late and then would need to adjust the night time dosage of it as well. I am taking half my Levemir at night and half in the morning. After a quick trip to Target, which everyday is either a trip to Target, Walmart or the Dollar Store when you are married to a teacher.
Our spaghetti and meatballs were almost done so I decided to test again….581. Wait, what did the meter just say? I tested again, now it just said HI, like it was playing with me. I told Amanda that it was crazy high, so I would not be eating dinner with her and I would eat later. After taking a massive amount of insulin for a correction and drinking a lot of water it was beginning to come down. That wasn’t my only issue at this time.
I also have a caffeine addiction, a really bad one. If I don’t drink an energy drink or a large coffee after lunch, I begin to get nauseous and light headed around dinner time. If I don’t have that caffeine, I have to take a nap or lay down for a bit and then I feel all better, that is until I drink a soda with my dinner. With that little side story, I didn’t have an energy drink yesterday, so mixed with the high blood sugar was also the caffeine withdrawal I was dealing with it, so it was time to take a nap while Amanda ate and hope that my sugar came down enough to be able to eat when I woke up.
I slept for a little over an hour and when I woke up my sugar was now down to 310 or so. I still wanted to wait a bit for it to get down below 200 because I just cooked spaghetti and meatballs, you better believe I was eating it. Once it went below 200, I bolused again for the meal and ate. The rest
of the night my numbers were great, hovering around 115-140. When I went to bed my blood sugar was 115.
I did wake up in the middle of the night with a low, but with some bedside Skittles that was fixed pretty quickly. Now on to today for a whole other advantage with diabetes. Can’t wait!
After Meal Spikes
This is one of those areas of my diabetes management where I am almost at the point of just throwing up my hands and saying, “I give up”. I know that we all have those moments where we feel like giving up on something, diabetes related or not, but I know that I can’t. It is just becoming frustrating beyond belief as to why I can’t seem to figure this out.
I have taken insulin 10 minutes before meal time, 20 minutes before, even 30 minutes before meal time! None of them seem to work. My average spike is about 75-100 higher. I’ll go from 125 to 200 easily after a meal and then it takes a while to come down.
I have tried different sites, even “virgin sites” as my endo referred to them. To make sure that after 7 years on a pump that it’s not the site areas that are giving me the problems. That is another topic for another day.
I am using Apidra with a pump.
Anybody have any advice?
Manually Logging my BG’s
The other day I decided that it was time to manually log my blood sugars again, along with the calorie and carb intakes. I feel that by writing them down, I am able to hold myself more accountable for them and I am a bit more aware of the numbers and certain trends. When I don’t log, I may know that my sugars have been trending high, but I don’t know exactly why or what the trends are. Read More
Lots and Lots of Insulin
I have been up in Pennsylvania for over a week now spending some great time with my family. Along with that family time comes a lot of food. A lot of food means a lot of insulin. I have been going through insulin like it is water, literally. On an average day, I use about 180-190 units of insulin. That’s with my high basal rates, plus my unhealthy eating. Add in being back at home with all of my favorite restaurants, I have been averaging 250 units of insulin a day for the last few days. Some people don’t even use 250 units a month, let alone in a single day.
This is something that I am not proud of, and I know that I need to make up for all the extra insulin used by cutting back on the amount of insulin that I use when I get back to Florida and eat healthier again.
This all goes back to the whole idea of balance in my life. I need to balance out this mass eating and insulin intake that I have been going through this past week and eat very low carb and keep my boluses to as low as possible for at least a week.
We shall see how well the low – carb adventure goes when I get back tomorrow.
Silhouetting for the First Time
As most of you know, I lost my insurance a couple of months ago and since then I have been scrambling trying to find the supplies that I need to get by until I’m able to properly budget for all the crazy costs that are occurring now. During this time, I was able to try out the Silhouette infusion sets for the first time. I have been pushing this off because, well, they kind of scared me because I knew they had a lot bigger of a needle.
I do not have the insertion device, so I knew that I had to go at it all by myself. This was pretty terrifying, especially the first time. It went in pretty easily, but then again, I’m not even sure that it went in all the way. The whole 20-40 degree angle insertion thing was a little tricky. It reminded me of the Medtronic CGM insertion device (which I dislike strongly as well). Overall, there was no blood, no screaming, and nothing too crazy. Read More
One Heck of a Dexcom Ride
The other day I went on one heck of a Dexcom ride. I don’t like roller coasters because I have a serious fear of heights and have a firm belief that my death will come by way of a poisonous snake bite or a roller coaster coming off the tracks. Therefore, I avoid roller coasters. However, I cannot avoid those diabetes blood sugar roller coasters at all times. Even though I try to, they still occur.
I haven’t had one in a while, but boy did I have one on Wednesday. Tuesday night I was high, near the 300’s. By the time I woke up in the morning, I had it down to about 120-ish. Then I ate lunch and it went back up. Right before dinner I went low to about 60-ish. I was going to be eating chicken and rice, so I figured I would wait until halfway through my meal to take my insulin because I didn’t want to go super low while I was eating. That’s when the steep increase at the beginning of the coaster started. I went from a bg of 70 to a bg of 370 in under an hour. I have NEVER gone that high, that fast. In fact, I didn’t even think it was possible. If it wasn’t for testing my blood sugar to make sure my Dexcom was giving me the right numbers, I would have never believed it. Read More
Bumpy Start to Month of March
The month of March has not been the best start of a month for blood sugar levels. I have hit 300 every day so far this month. Not just once a day, but for a few hours every day. Morning blood sugars have been around 250-300 and when that happens it pretty much just screws up everything. Dinners have not been anything out of the ordinary, and neither has breakfast or lunch. I’ve just been in a diabetes rut, if you will, for a few weeks. I can’t seem to get myself out of it.
A couple of weeks ago, I tweaked a lower back injury that I had back in college and it has pretty much shut me down exercise-wise for about 2-3 weeks. I have not been able to ride my exercise bike, go for a run, or really do anything in that time frame, so it’s been really screwing up my diet and weight loss plan. I have a pool in our community, but I have not been utilizing that, I think it is time.
I have a doctors appointment in 2 weeks and my doctor said she would have liked me to lose some weight before that next appointment, and I don’t think that I am going to hit the goal that we had set for myself.
Well, this is just another day, week, month of my life with diabetes.
Take care ya’ll