One great thing!

Day two - One great thing.

Living with diabetes (or caring for someone who lives with it) sure does take a lot of work, and it’s easy to be hard on ourselves if we aren’t “perfect”. But today it’s time to give ourselves some much deserved credit. Tell us about just one diabetes thing you (or your loved one) does spectacularly! Fasting blood sugar checks, oral meds sorted and ready, something always on hand to treat a low, or anything that you do for diabetes. Nothing is too big or too small to celebrate doing well!

I sat and thought about this post for a while and after much thought I have concluded that the list of things I need to work on is much longer than the list of things I'm good at! However I know i am definitely good at BM's(Blood monitoring). Before going to bed at night I set my alarm for the following morning by working out what time I need to be out and about by, how long I'll need to get ready and 40 minutes built in to allow for medical type stuff! Then its bed time.

When the alarm rings my first thought is BM kit, followed by what do I think my BM might be? How am I feeling? Have I slept well? Once I have found the BM kit i locate my inhaler for my asthma and take that. As I keep all my other tablets in my BM kit (thyroid etc) I take it downstairs and pop the kettle on. Whilst waiting for it to boil I do a BM, take my tablets and note down anything important in my diary. Then I'll have my brew whilst starting to get ready and quite often take Jasper for a walk. This normally wastes the half hour I need to wait before being able to eat.

Following getting ready I always do a BM before driving to make sure I'm OK (normally within 15mins). I do a BM before lunch and if I'm trying to check my basals I'll do one two hours after both breakfast and lunch! Then unless there is a need to drive somewhere I won't test again until dinner time. This is again the same routine of checking before and potentially two hours after a meal.

The other times I always test are before and after exercise, when trying new foods I'll test more frequently to try and understand the break down of the food and post shower/bath as it appears that the heat causes me to dip even though I'm pumpless for a short time! By this time its almost back to bedtime were I will take my inhalers again and the tablets I take before bed and finally before putting the alarm on do one final BM and keep my fingers crossed it is sevenish!

As I presently have a decent hypo awareness I tend to wake in the night should I dip and will then BM and stay awake doing one every 15mins until it is above 6...Some nights are longer than others and on some occasion the dog or my husband (who can tell if I'm hypo by text!!) have woken me prior to me getting awareness so I'm very lucky,

So the one thing I do well -BM's!! At the very least I do 5 a day and I'm now using the information appropriately to improve my A1c.

On a final note what i would like to say is that because I do 5 a day its like second nature to me, to many other people its probably as natural as answering a text message. Due to it being so natural to me I  do a BM literally anywhere, in the car, a park bench, the beach, the dinner table...I once even did it whilst pushing a lock gate on the canal. For this reason I don't apologise to the ignorant people who know nothing about my condition and find my equipment offensive!! If you don't like it look the other way!!

I'm type one diabetic, 27years and three months and strangely I'm damn proud of it!! =)