Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Revenge of the Diabetes

Upon being diagnosed with a condition that could kill me quickly (cancer), I decided -- with the concurrence of my doctors, I might add -- to focus on that particular problem and ignore my twenty-five year old condition that was trying to kill me slowly (type I diabetes). 

It appears that after eleven months my diabetes has decided that it's tired of being ignored. Until now, while I've had the occasional bad blood sugar value -- an espresso shake is so worth it -- it's never been that bad, and some extra insulin generally brings things back to the normal range. But for the last three or so weeks, my blood sugars have been far (far, far, far) from normal and nothing I'm doing is bringing them back into the normal range. 

I'll inject 20+ units of insulin, avoid eating or drinking anything, and two hours later my blood sugar is higher than it was when I started. And while exercise would normally be the other primary way to bring down my blood sugar values, the neuropathy in my feet has gotten so bad I can barely walk much less run or do anything else that could bring down my blood sugar values. 

The biggest problem is that I have not a single clue what the cause of this is. Could be I've added some food with hidden sugar in it, or the neuropathy has slowed me down so badly that I'm not burning the sugars, or one of the various drugs I'm getting is impacting my blood sugar. Or something else I'm not even aware of. 

I just know I gotta figure this out soon. The side effects of the cancer are bad enough without the added complication of blood sugar values that are consistently three, four or five times what they should be. 

So much for ignoring the diabetes, and the next form I have to fill out that asks for my profession is going to get "medical patient" as this is turning into a career. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.