Diabetes Blog Week – Day in the Life

I think Karen’s idea of running a diabetes blog week is a great idea and I am happy to be participating in it.  Day one is a day in the life of diabetes.  Well this post should be easy for me, being that the name of my blog is The Life of a Diabetic, that is what I blog about daily.  As diabetics, we all do the same things differently.  Sounds like it doesn’t make sense, but it does. We all test our blood sugar, but we use different meters and different times a day, etc.  So here is a normal weekday of my life.

7:00 am – Wake up and find some coffee like some sort of zombie before I do anything at all.  Usually, if I am making coffee I will test my blood sugar while the coffee is brewing.  That is the first test of the day.  Usually my blood sugar is a little high in the morning, about 170, so I will need to correct.  I don’t always eat breakfast in the morning, so there’s usually not a bolus for that.  Also, at this time I check my pump to make sure that I have enough insulin for the day.  If I don’t, then I will fill another reservoir and keep it with me for when it runs dry.

9:00 a.m. – Next blood sugar test.  This one is primarily used to check and see how the correction worked in the morning.  If I am going to have a mid-morning snack, this is typically the time that I will take it.

12:00 p.m. – Lunch time!  Time for another test and time to count the carbs in my meal to determine how much insulin to take.  I have to take a lot of insulin, mainly because I am so overweight.  I used to be on a 15:1 carb ratio, then it was 10:1, then it went to 8:1, now it is down to a 5:1 carb ratio.  That means for every 5 carbs, I have to take 1 unit of insulin.  On a typical day, I will eat either a salad or a sandwich and sometimes left over pasta.

2:30 p.m. – After lunch test.  This is just a quick test to see how well I counted the carbs and if the insulin did it’s job or not.  This is one of the two or three tests a day that I worry about because I want to make sure that I took the right amount of insulin.

6:00 p.m. – This is the time that I usually wrap up my work for a few hours and take a break to eat dinner, exercise, watch tv and just hang out.  Also, at this time I will change out my infusion sets if need be or change my reservoir.  A typical dinner for me definitely includes a salad and then whatever is for dinner that night.  Lately I have been eating too much and having 2 servings instead of just one, but that is all changing now because I have been out of control.

11:00 p.m. – Sometimes I test before this time, but I will definitely test at this time because it is when I start getting some more work done and I will usually drink an energy drink at that time.

The rest of the night is unpredictable because I can either stay up until 3:00 doing work, or I will just go to bed early.

Well, day one of Diabetes Blog Week is down, can’t wait to post tomorrow’s as well.