| 6ixStringJack: I don't even want to think about how the hell I'd navigate a roller coaster situation if all I had was my intuition and a 30 pack of test strips that are supposed to last me half a month. |
| 6ixStringJack: I don't even want to think about how the hell I'd navigate a roller coaster situation if all I had was my intuition and a 30 pack of test strips that are supposed to last me half a month. |
| 6ixStringJack: I was completely lost those first few months. I could pretty easily live without the insulin pods and go back to shooting every day and before every meal, but I do believe that the CGM saved both my life and my sanity. |
| 6ixStringJack: Even if Diabetes were objectively worse than Hypoglycemia is, I wouldn't trade with you. Not knowing something like that is something that would literally drive me crazy. If anybody ever takes away my ability to know what my blood sugar is every 5 minutes, I don't imagine I will be living much longer after that. |
6ixStringJack: That feeling when it comes fast is pretty scary. I mean, at this point I don't get spooked much by it anymore. Chances are that I may have even experienced it more than you have in my few short years now just because of how dangerous and even deadly insulin can be if not administered correctly every single time. My problem now is that I still get jittery enough to over-compensate and get my ass on that rollercoaster that's pretty hard to get off once you start it.  |
| 6ixStringJack: I never ate much sweets or immediate sugar, but I ate TONS of rice and pasta, so I was a non-sweet sugar factory. |
| 6ixStringJack: I got SICK in the long run for sure when I was not processing the sugar (maybe for years), but it wasn't apparent until all the weight loss when I was walking around with a 300+ average per day for a few months. |
| 6ixStringJack: Wow. So you can still get sick with too much sugar and your body doesn't process it fast enough. Is that part of being hypoglycemic, or is that possibly something different? |
| Brenda: Mine if it goes low during the night, I find it is closer to the early morning hours. Then when I get up I feel crappy. So, I am in slow mode to make sure I don't worsen the situation. |
| Brenda: What happened with my mum that time was an extreme case. Usually it is a slow burn for me too unless I am rushing around and I can really feel it coming on. |
| Brenda: I don't know which is worse diabetes or hypoglycemia. At least you can monitor it but I can only go by how I am feeling. Soda these day it probably is a mix of both. Plain sugar and corn syrup. |
| Brenda: Taking glucose tabs would be too much sugar for me and I have thought about it over the years. But no. I might have even told this story. Was out with a friend and we stopped for lunch at a Chinese place. I had sweet and sour pork, glass of coke. Well, with all that sugar I couldn't finish it. We paid left the restaurant and got back in the car. I was feeling so crappy, my friend looked at me and said you are green. Now it's an hours drive from where we were back to the city. By the time we got back, I was feeling better. It took my body an hour to process that amount of sugar. |
| Brenda: I think I remember talking about that too when you were first diagnosed. When I am that low, yes I do. It probably is because our problems are caused by different things. |
| 6ixStringJack: That's really interesting that your blood sugar would dip overnight while you're sleeping too. That's the worst time for me because your liver dumps sugar and growth hormone in your bloodstream while you're sleeping. So even if I didn't eat for hours before bed, I could be dropping for the first 3 or 4 hours of sleep, but by the time I woke up I'd have a score of over 200 by the time I woke up if I didn't have a basal shot or my insulin pod stopped working overnight while I was sleeping. It was part of why my numbers were the worst in the morning when I was in ketoacidosis. I was waking up regularly in the morning anywhere between 400 and 600 for months while I was losing all that weight before I got the diagnosis. |
| 6ixStringJack: Most times I get down to 60 it's a slow burn and it was because I was doing physical work while also getting my full basal drip during the day and not having it on automatic mode. That's not such a serious thing and it is a slow drop, so even if I didn't catch the low before the monitor hits 60 and tells me I'm there, I usually still have about 30 minutes to eat something and get back up before I dip anywhere below 50 and start feeling negative effects, so I can eat something healthy and get back up without putting more pure sugar or whatever corn syrup garbage they put in our soda these days. |
| 6ixStringJack: If I tried fixing that with peanut butter alone, I'd be either dead or braindead by the time that kicked in and got my sugar up to a reasonable level. Not even joking. Can of soda works just as quick, but I don't ever keep any of that on hand. Same with candy, but I don't keep that around. If I've got that honey and oats Cheerios on hand, that would be about the quickest food product I could consume to get me back up, but it's still not as fast as the tabs or pure junk. |
| 6ixStringJack: I take 3 or 4 glucose tabs (they are big), which is just basically 15 grams of pure sugar. Unless I've made a really serious mistake, 4 tabs usually is more than enough to get me back to where I need to be within about 10 minutes max. Unfortunately, there's really no "healthy" option to get me up fast enough because if I'm getting that low it came in quick and is still dropping fast because of the excess insulin floating around in my veins. |
| 6ixStringJack: I remember the story with your mom and you walking like you were drunk. I think when I was first diagnosed and had my first low we were talking about it then. It sounds to me like you need quite a bit to recover when you go low. I wonder if that's more our own differences in DNA that react differently, or if our illnesses are really that far apart under the hood despite the identical negative effects we can suffer if we don't fix the issue asap? |
| Brenda: My mum once got an example of me going low when we were shopping. She said I was walking like I was drunk. We went to a local restaurant and I kid you not. I eat a small bowl of soup, a small bowl of spaghetti and meat sauce then dessert with a small pepsi on top of that. I felt good enough that we could walk home. But once in I ate half a bun with peanut butter on it and another half glass of pepsi before I really felt alright. |
| Brenda: That's another difference for me it will usually take time for me to realize that it is happening. I don't eat overly sugared cereal that is bad for me. I ten to eat Quaker instant porridge for my meds. Then before I go to bed, I switch between Shreddies with not much sugar to spoon sided shredded wheat with no sugar. |