Once again, I am going to dive into blame, guilt and diabetes. But for the first time, I’m not blaming myself or feeling guilty about having diabetes.
This time I am blaming insulin, and doubt if that little b***h feels one bit of guilt. And therein lies the story
Circa Mid-February, 2011
Time for a new vial of insulin, like countless times before. My numbers had been running higher than normal for the last few days and I had just attributed that to stress (on a scale of 1 to 10, my stress was rated at a 3,432 on the Holy Crap, You’re Stressed scale). And on into February, the stress increased and my numbers trailed right along. After a few more days of this, I changed by Dexcom High Alarm from 200 to 300 because I was fucking tired of hearing it go off.
On into early March, another new vile vial and the numbers stay consistently high, running right around 200. Then comes the weekend for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Government Outreach Day(s) and time for the DOC Blogger roundtables (There were actually 2 roundtable sessions, but the second hasn’t found it’s way onto the intrawebz yet). A little stress before a presentation is normal for me, but the numbers weren’t. I’d been through 5 or 6 infusion sets by this time and was running a +80 basal rate and my numbers continued to edge upwards.
After staying up way too late with my blogger comrades I was rewarded with an alarm. Not only had I hit 300, but I had an up arrow as well. Realizing that something was really wrong and that I was in the “box” (I’ll explain that in today’s snarky comment) it finally occurred to me to switch to my back up insulin vial. And that did it. 3 hours later I am at 116. I had been spilling large ketones since I switched at about 2am and assume I still was as I went to breakfast, trying to convince my body to go back to burning glucose. I bet the vial that I had been using before this was from the same lot and had been contributing to the high numbers I had been seeing for weeks.
And of course, the session we bloggers had with Jeffery Brewer was that morning at 9am. I was definitely not on my best game and felt so bad once it was over that I headed out almost immediately. I therefore missed the group pictures (word on the street is that I’m going to be photo-shopped into one…). Kelly Rawlings tweeted that they looked for me but thought I had “disapparated”, to which I replied “more like DKA-apparated”.
Come 10am I had to go to the bathroom for the first time since about 3am, despite the fact I had been drinking as much water as I possibly could, and I was still spilling ketones. My sugars though were holding under 150. I probably should have gone to the ER, but they would have probably wanted to admit me. I really didn’t need admission, I just needed a few bags of fluids and a little time and just did not want to have to argue with a doctor about it; I absolutely did not have the patience for that discussion. Granted the ER would have made me feel better a lot faster…
So here’s you, little fucking bottle of insulin, you made me realize that I need to make sure I’m not in the box when I’m having odd issues. Fucker.
Scott
Today’s snarky comment: I hate the phrase “think outside the box”. The trick is to realize you are in the box in the effing first place, moron!
** Disclaimer: The JDRF covered my travel, hotel and meal expenses for this trip to Washington, DC. They did not ask me to blog or not to blog about my experiences and these were my own thoughts and opinions; nor did they endorse the profanity contained herein **
© 2011 Scott Strange, Strangely Diabetic and http://StrangelyDiabetic.com
