There is a popular social media campaign around the words "diabetes doesn't stop me." I've used it, I've tweeted it, I've used it in Instagram posts. But sometimes diabetes does stop us. I used to say that diabetes doesn't stop me, but it may slow me down. Today it stopped me.
Today diabetes stopped me from going to work after a week and a half off for the holidays. Staying home from work, or really from anything related to diabetes, isn't something I take lightly. Today I opted to not go in to work due to an unexplained morning high blood glucose (bg) of 467. At first I thought I felt fine. But as I started to move and prepare for the day I realized I wasn't fine. The decision not to go to work stemmed from my brain being fuzzy, and my joints feeling achy, and not knowing what caused the high.
As I write this my bg is finally back in range at 132 after 6 hours. Treating a high bg takes time and patience. The higher my bg, the longer it seems to take for it to come back in range. It takes time for the insulin to fully do it's thing, and it takes a lot of self control to not keep dosing insulin until the drop in bg starts to happen (this is called insulin stacking).
At the end of the day it's important to keep in mind that not only does life happen, but so do unexpected high (and low) bgs. It may make us mad, angry, upset, feel like garbage, but it's important to remember that it will pass.