Ups and downs

Sometimes diabetes tricks you into thinking you know what you’re doing.

For the last few weeks my blood sugar has been great. It’s been stable, almost predictable at times, and I’ve been able to guess where it will go after I eat, what it will do while I sleep, and what I need to do to keep it on track.

With a steady diet, I’ve got to know what certain foods will do to it. I’ve been able to stay on top of it. It’s given me a wonderful sense of grandeur, like I’m some kind of super diabetic that doctors should be coming to for advice.


Then, as always, it all came crashing down.


Diabetes hates it when you think you understand it. It likes to throw a spanner in the works once in a while just to keep you humble, to keep you on your toes. It likes to TEST YOU. Mine decided to start a few days ago, by seeing how much of my Dextro supply it could use it up.

Normally when my blood sugar goes low, it takes three Dextro (lemon, obviously) to fix my hypos. Normally that’s the end of it. But recently I’ve been going through whole packs to try and keep me upright. I’ll take my usual three, leave it, check again, need more, check again, need more. In the past whenever I’ve been tempted to do this, I’ve ended up sending my glucose way up the other end of the scale. But not at the moment. Now all that’s happening is it’s falling away again, hovering around the 5.3 mark and threatening to go right back down.

It’s been less ups and downs, and more just down, down, deeper and down.

Status Quo - Down down (Single 1974, Album On the Level 1975) Francis Rossi - Guitar, Vocals Rick Parfitt - Guitar, Vocals Alan Lancaster - Bass John Coghlan - Drums


Here are my working theories:

  1. My pancreas has started producing its own insulin again. I am cured!

  2. My background insulin is probably too high. I need to lower that.

I’m going to give theory one a few minutes to prove itself, but then tonight I’ll lower my background dose and see what that does in a few days time. That seems the more scientific approach to take.

While it’s nice to feel like you’re on top of things occasionally, it’s always good to keep an eye out for any signs. Regular lows is a pretty sure fire hint you should be doing something differently.