I am an insulin dependent diabetic. What that means is that, among other things, I have to give myself insulin injections on a daily basis.
One of the things I quickly learned after I was diagnosed with diabetes is that there is math involved in managing your diabetes. The ironic thing is, I really dislike math, and now I am stuck having to do it every day, several times a day. I keep thinking of all those math teachers who said I would use a specific type of math one day, and how I blew off what they said. The teachers in my head are now saying “I told you so”.
My day starts off with a stick in the finger. Before coffee, before breakfast, before anything else I have to get some blood out of my finger and test it to see how high my blood sugar is. I do not care how many 1000’s of times I have stuck myself in the finger, it still hurts. A lot of times it hurts more than my insulin injections do.
If everything, insulin, medications, and meal planning, worked out the way they were supposed to, my blood sugar in the mornings is around 110. That is a good number for me. Not to low, not to high, right on target for what I need to achieve.
I am always so darn hungry in the mornings. The whole time I am checking my blood sugar, my tummy is growling. Some mornings it is so difficult to resist the temptation of going ahead and eating breakfast before I check my blood sugar. The worst mornings are when I have not slept well and I wake up around three or four.
After I check my blood sugar, I can go about the business of making coffee and breakfast. I have to carefully account for every bit of food that I am going to put in my mouth. It has to all balance out so that I am only taking in a certain amount of sugar and carbohydrates. Breakfast has become my favorite meal of the day, because I can eat more then than at any other time. What I usually do is combine my breakfast and my morning snack allowances into one meal. I do this for no other reason but to have a bigger breakfast. I told you I was hungry in the mornings. Maybe I should have said that I was very hungry in the mornings.
Before I can eat, I have to give myself a small insulin injection. Usually about three units of insulin. I have to do this because my depression medications have a tendency to raise my blood sugar slightly. After the injection, the chow down can commence.
After I eat breakfast I am already thinking about what I can have for lunch, planning it out in my head. You can tell from my profile picture that I am a person who enjoys food. I really enjoy food. I like cooking, I like planning menus, I just enjoy everything that has to do with food. One thing I have noticed though, is that ever since I have been diagnosed with diabetes I seem to focus on food even more than I used to. Maybe it is because I have to spend so much time every day planning what I eat out, or because I have to always be so aware of everything that I put in my mouth, or because as much as I still enjoy food there is a part of me that views food as the enemy.
After breakfast I have to take care of my feet. Because a diabetic does not have the best circulation, their feet have to be taken care of extremely well. One little injury has the potential to become infected very quickly and can result in the foot and/or leg being amputated. So every day I have to check my feet for any injuries and put lotion on them. One of my favorite things to do was to go barefoot everywhere. I cannot do that anymore. Too much of a risk.
The lunch process is similar to the breakfast routine. Once again, the dreaded finger stick. Ugh! I am so tired of having to inflict pain on myself several times a day. There are some days I put off eating lunch as long as possible so I do not have to go through the whole finger stick thing right away.
I won’t bore you with the whole procedure, injection, stuffing my face, already thinking about my afternoon snack and supper, more finger sticks at supper and another injection.
Before I go to bed every night I have to give myself yet another injection. This one is of a long lasting insulin and the dose is rather large. Of all the shots this is the one I really dislike. Because of the amount of insulin I have to inject, this one tends to sting. Sometimes, a bubble of insulin will develop and I have to be very careful, and not let any insulin come back out.
The next morning the whole thing starts over again.
I get so tired of it all sometimes. I get tired of the finger sticks, I get tired of the injections, I get tired of all the things I have to remember to manage my diabetes. It is a very tedious disease. Always so much to do with it, always having to think about it, everyday the same thing, needles, needles needles. Sometimes I think about just not doing it anymore.
Before I started getting help with my depression, and I really did not care about living any more, there were many days when I did not do any of the things I needed to do to take care of my diabetes. Now that I have a better mind set, I do not skip my injections, or my finger sticks, no matter how tired I get of the whole thing. I have a family that cares about me and I care about them, I want to live, so I do what I am supposed to do, needles and all.
The pictures at the top, from left to right
glucose meter (one of the types I have), insulin pen (same type as I use), needles for insulin pens (similar to what I use)
