Month: January 2017

Taking a Break from My Insulin Pump

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I spent two weeks disconnected from my insulin pump last month. It was honestly the best decision I could have made for my diabetes management in the long run. Going back to the simplicity of injections gave me some much needed relief from the stress the pump was inflicting on me, as well as a lot of time to reflect on how I wanted to manage my diabetes going forward. With a much clearer head today, I will add some more to what I wrote about this pump break last month.


As we were heading into warmer weather and the festive season towards the end of last year, I was spending a lot more time being physically active. Watering the garden, Christmas shopping, setting up Christmas lights and activity around the house. Suddenly, a lot of what I had learned and experienced over the past few months from using an insulin pump had changed.

Being plugged into rapid acting insulin all the time felt exhausting. I was going low all the time. Even simple things, like watering the garden, would send my blood sugars spiralling downward. I felt like a single day without a hypo was rare. I often found myself eating my way out of impending hypos, and trying to predict what my blood sugar levels were going to do to me before leaving the house.

I felt really, really lost. I had very little confidence in my basal rates, or insulin to carb ratios. I had no idea whether it was my basal rates, or my insulin to carb ratios that were sending me low. I no longer felt safe leaving the house for half an hour without a meter and tonnes of skittles to fall back on. I’m pretty sure I had made the connection between physical activity and my lows, but I just felt far too overwhelmed at the thought of fine tuning everything once again.

I was nervously pacing up and down on a Friday night in December, deliberating over a site change or a Lantus injection. I was equally scared about going back to using Lantus, given how uneven and inconsistent it had been for me in the past. What finally got me over the line was telling myself that insulin pumping was no longer working for me. I knew that it was the source of all of this frustration, and that I didn’t need to use it if I didn’t want to.

The days that followed were quite honestly the happiest I’d felt in several weeks. The freedom from that annoying chunk of a pump, and the relief from not having to stress about basal insulin sending me low from a short walk. I was honestly so happy at the time, I was convinced that this might be the way forward for me. I was so relieved, I kept telling myself how much better injections were compared to the last few weeks I’d had on the insulin pump.

I went from having days like this.


To having days like this.


I anticipated I’d probably only last a few days without my pump. But injections were going surprisingly well for me. Everytime I stared at my pump, I just knew that I didn’t feel ready to hook back onto it. At the one week mark, I even stashed it in a drawer because I didn’t want to look at it.

My pump break gave me some much needed time to clear my head. I plugged back in for a few days over Christmas, because I knew that I would need the temporary basal rates and extended boluses to help me cruise through all of the food. I was fully prepared to take it off again after Christmas, but quite honestly I haven’t felt any desire to do so since.

I’ve been setting temporary basal rates around physical activity, and they seemed to do the trick from the get go with minimal hiccups. I’ve been setting a -30% temporary basal rate before I get into the car to go to the shops, and switching my insulin delivery to “off” for half an hour if I go for a short walk around the block in the afternoon. I think I’ve had about 2 or 3 hypos in the New Year, which is not only a big relief, but tells me that I must be doing something right. 

If it weren’t for Christmas, I’m not sure whether I would still call myself an insulin pumper today. In those two weeks, I was absolutely fine with the possibility of going back to injections permanently if that was what worked best for me. 

At the moment, things are travelling well with the pump. Things are making sense once again, and I honestly have not felt any desire to be without it since Christmas. 

Could this change again down the track? Who knows? This is diabetes, after all…

What I have learned, however, is that I absolutely will not hesitate to take a pump break if the need arises again.

My diabetes, my rules…

The First Hypo of 2017

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I went seven days into the new year without a hypo. And then this happened…

My blood sugar level was 8.8 an hour after dinner on Saturday night. I let things be and went about brushing my teeth, clearing the debris of diabetes waste on my desk, and putting away the clothes and shoes I had worn earlier in the day.

When I checked my blood sugar an hour later, my meter came back 19.8. What? I couldn’t believe I had risen so quickly in such a short space of time. I probably should have tested again, just to be certain.

I entered the reading of 19.8 into my insulin pump so that it could suggest a correction dose for me. I reactively overrode my pump’s suggestion, giving the whole correction dose and ignoring insulin I had on board.

When it was time for bed, I suspected as much. Sure enough, my meter came back with a 2.9. I reached for my insulin pump, which told me I had 3 units of insulin on board to eat my way out of.

I shoved four Chocolate Cream biscuits into my mouth, struggling to recall how many I had eaten by the time I got to (what I think was) number 4. Side note: Christmas biscuit tins are proving to be awesome hypo supplies. Unless they’re tins of shortbread. Shortbread is simply too good to waste on hypos…


I shuffled into the kitchen to weigh one of the biscuits, just to be sure that the serving size was right and I had eaten enough carbs.

As I lay down on my bed, and placed the back of my head on the pillow, the hypo really hit me. The sweat, the shakiness, the feelings of exhaustion, the paralysis. I didn’t want to do anything else other than lie there, willing my eyes not to shut.

Those hypo feelings weren’t subsiding, but almost half an hour had passed and I knew it was time to check my blood sugars again.

My meter came back at 1.8.

I frantically shoved another 2 biscuits in my mouth. My hypo brain decided that those Chocolate Cream biscuits needed to washed down with a glass of Cadbury drinking chocolate. I shuffled my way into the kitchen, driven only by the cravings of chocolate milk. Stirring the powder and the milk together in my glass was absolutely painful. Making sure I scraped every visible bit of powder stuck to the bottom of my glass in my stirring action, and waiting for it to come to that perfectly blended consistency before I could skull it down.

Satisfied, I shuffled back to my bed, once again waiting. The next check came back at 3.6, followed by a 4.7 minutes later. I knew I had overtreated. Not wanting a repeat of the night’s events, I set consecutive alarms for the next three hours until I had brought my levels back into range.

An Ode to the Medic Alert Bracelet

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We’ve never liked each other very much, have we?

From the day that nurse with diabetes came to visit me in the hospital, showing me one of your siblings in the hopes of altering my enthusiasm towards the initial idea of you.

The initial idea of you branding me as a diabetic. Labelling me, for the whole world to see. Marking me with a permanent reminder of the condition that I will be stuck with for the rest of my life.

I’ve tried. I really have.

But you annoy me. Your expanda band sticks to my skin. I can’t help but fidget with you. ALL THE TIME. My wrist feels trapped, and suffocated every single time I have you on.

You leave my Mum and Dad’s words ringing in my ears.

“But it could save your life!”

I convince myself that it will never happen to me. An accident.

I convince myself that I’ll at least be conscious enough to utter the words “diabetes” if I ever find myself on the stretcher in an ambulance.

“But it could save your life!”

The words keep ringing in my ear. So much so, that I’m driven enough to wear you when I go out for long drives on my own. And on aeroplanes. You know, where an accident is more likely to happen…

But we’re still not able to make it work.

“What about a necklace?” You ask.

“What about something fancier?” The catalogue, filled with your dressed up children and cousins teases.

To be fair, jewellery annoys me too. And I hate having my pockets weighted down with anything that isn’t necessary.

But I am trying. I really am.

After committing to a watch in 2016, I felt motivated enough to replace your expanda band with a curb chain. It was a mild improvement. But not enough to actually wear you.

After leaving you in plain sight on my chest of drawers for months, I’ve finally decided that a New Year is as good an opportunity as any to make more of an effort to wear you in 2017.

I’m trying to see the good in you.

Won’t you be kind to me?

Staycation

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I am often asked when my next holiday will be, or if I have any travel plans in the pipeline. As much as I do love going on a holiday, they are equally exhausting by the time I return home. AND they cost money.

I’m not the kind of person who goes on a holiday to sit on the beach. I can easily do that at home. I want to go somewhere that I can explore and sightsee and be a tourist. But that is exhausting in itself. So ideally I’d love an extra week up my sleeve when I return home just to sleep in and catch up with life. But with a full time job, no lotto wins and only four weeks of annual leave, it rarely happens.

Throw diabetes into the mix of work and life, and after a while it feels like you’re just pulling it along, struggling to keep up. It’s monotonous. It’s always there. It never ceases to throw curveballs my way. 

Towards the end of last year, I definitely drew back a fair bit from my blog and from social media. I was feeling a lot of frustration towards my pump, which I’ll write more about soon. I felt like I was venting my diabetes frustrations all the time, without anything of value to say. 

I had a lot of other things going on at home and at work, leaving me with little enthusiasm for much else. It had been ages since I’d binge watched a good TV drama, or even gone to the beach. But I was exhausted.

So, after working through most of December, I decided to take a much needed Staycation. You know, being able to sleep in, make breakfast at 10am, go to the beach, binge on a good TV drama at midday, go to the shops without being in a hurry, stay up late into the night and recharge the batteries. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BOybRlFDCvR/?taken-by=franksita

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BO2FbtPDzvW/?taken-by=franksita

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPBr7jEDAK7/?taken-by=franksita

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BOhdghEjg9I/?taken-by=franksita

 

It began with all of this seemingly endless time stretched out in front of me, and before I knew it I was wondering how it could be over so soon. I guess that’s a good thing…

Staycations are awesome. They’re cheap. They’re a good way to charge up the batteries quickly. And they kind of let me catch up to diabetes a little, so that I’m not lagging behind for too long.

Cheers to Two Years!

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*blows shortbread crumbs off the keyboard*

Happy New Year!

I can’t help but feel like saying “WE MADE IT!”

We made it to the finish line of 2016, with a New Year and the promise of a fresh start ahead of us.

I hope you had a wonderful festive season, and hopefully some time out to recharge the batteries. With the reality of heading back to work tomorrow starting to sink in, the festive season is well and truly over for another year.

This little corner of the internet also happened to mark its second birthday last week. It’s been two years since I began blogging here at Type 1 Writes, and since I first entered into the fray that is the Diabetes Online Community.

As often as I am thanked for my blog and it’s helpfulness, I’ve needed this space just as much as you. This space started out as the pet project of a university graduate, and I never really knew what would become of it.

I struggled with managing a very demanding and isolating condition that is type 1 diabetes. I wasn’t satisfied with the state of my management, but I lacked the knowledge and motivation to do all of the things that added up half decent blood sugar levels.

The past two years have brought a wave of peer support, knowledge, learning, inspiration, empowerment and “me toos.” Although diabetes is an impossible condition to manage at the best of times, I feel I have a far better idea of how to tame it than I once did.

I really owe it to all of you.

The supportive comments that have come from my blog posts. The conversations that happen on Twitter. The support from people on my own Facebook page who I didn’t think would care less about diabetes. The e-mails that arrive from the contact page on my blog. Your articles and blog posts that provide me with insights and inspiration to apply to my own diabetes management. To those of you who are kind enough to check in when my blog is quiet. To my family at home who I couldn’t have done this, and diabetes, without.

2 years, 313 posts, 1,110 comments, 5,000 odd tweets, 100 or so OzDOC chats, and thousands of coffees later, I can’t thank you enough for the past two years.

Having diabetes absolutely sucks, but you guys make it suck just a little bit less.

Scruffy and I wish you nothing but the best for 2017. Make it a good one, friends.

(P.S. Scruffy, I’m still waiting for that guest post you were going to write for me months ago…)

Cheers to two years!

 – Frank