Instructions Not Included

Weirdly, my last couple of posts have been about the things that get me really fired up. Bad, bad jokes and how they aren't as funny as one might initially think, and my current branch of advocacy, and how that gets me positively fired up, rather than just simply angry.

So I'm having to think hard about what I want to say here. Partially because I've had about a week and a half now of just awful levels - I can't seem to keep down in range (or even close), and I'm worn down, and partly because I feel that whatever I'm going to say is almost certainly being said better elsewhere. 

But then I thought more about how I'm feeling. Right now. Because of what D is throwing at me. Not physically, but emotionally. 

I feel sad. And a bit useless. And flat. And empty. And then all the words come out. Those words that attach to feelings that I don't always like to talk about. Because those words can take me to dark places, and that's a bit like balancing on a see-saw for me. 

This is a confession to you - reader, on the internet, and by proxy pretty much anyone who feels like seeing this. So basically the whole world. Potentially, anyway. I've not always had the easiest ride with emotional, and yes, I suppose mental health. I'm prone to long periods of what feels like 'empty balloon time' to me. Where all the puff, all the wind, the air, whatever it is that keeps me up and going, goes away. I can cope with a day of the blues, but I know what a day of the blue is compared to empty balloon time. When I'm just in a bad mood or a bit low, or, like today, I can pick up a book in a shop and start crying because, yes, that says exactly what I'm feeling just now (Michael Rosen's Sad Book, if you want to know. It's about death, but he describes sadness and emptiness in such an honest way). 

And I think all of this has a lot to do with the fact I'm running really high for an extended period of time. It messes with me emotionally, but though D might be the cause, my feelings are still my own, and having and admitting them is not something I should be ashamed of. But I'm not ON my own. I am by no means the only one with feelings like this, or with struggles that are even worse. 

Diabetes doesn't exactly give us time off. It's there all the time, even at the inconvenient moments, nudging away, wanting attention. I don't think it's surprising that people with diabetes are nearly twice as likely to experience mental health issues like depression or anxiety. It's also why I think it's important that we can admit that, hey it's not always easy. 

It's also why I respect and admire the work of all the team behind the You Can Do This Project. Like I said, we should never be ashamed of feelings that are less than 'shiny'. None of us are any less of a person for feeling negative feelings. At least that's what I'm telling myself today.

And honestly, this was not the post I was intending to write. I'm 100% sure where it came from. Which means it was probably exactly the post I needed to write.

 

 

Posted by Becky at 18:50 | Labels: dblog week, hypers | 1 comments |

So I've made no secret of my love of Dancesport. We're now far into the competition season, with only Roses 2011 left to go. This has meant some late nights, some early starts, and interesting dilemmas regarding the D. And where to hide Anneka. 

So earlier in this month had me competing in the Inter-Varsity Dance Competition (or IVDC as it's more commonly known) in Blackpool - the home of ballroom dancing, doncha know? So we were dancing at the Wintergardens. This place is gorgeous, for the record, and has one of the best dance floors in Europe. Problem of course, is that in order to get there for doors opening, and to get ready in time for the first rounds (which of COURSE happen to be one that I was competing in), our coach had to leave at 5am. 

Yes, you read that right. FIVE IN THE MORNING. Oy vey. By the way, I don't live near the university, so that means getting there. Too far to walk, especially with the amount of stuff I take with me, and several hours before the first bus. So expensive taxi ride it is.

Now, in my infinite wisdom, I managed to get my weeks mixed up, and thought that I had another week before the competition, which meant that I didn't really have any time to do those two words that fill me with a kind of dread, coupled with self loathing and ultimately necessity - fake tan. So that meant I had about 24 hours with which to achieve a hopefully appropriate level of tan, which was subtle enough for me not to be scared of my own reflection. I bought a wash off instant tan. 

There are a couple of things you should know about this. 1: I spent the end of my evening in a pair of latex gloves, pyjama bottoms and a bikini top. 2: It took about three attempts to get this right. 3: This was mainly because I hadn't realised I'd bought a shade too dark. 4: I realised about half way through that I would not be able to shower in the morning, and 5: It takes much, much longer than you think it will. 

I slept for a total of 45 minutes that night. Then I got up again, and got a taxi. When we got on the coach, I disovered that I had, in fact, found the coldest place on earth. Customarily, one expects the indoors to be warmer than the outside, but I'm fairly convinced that the sadistic coach driver had actually put the air conditioning on. It turns out that it's a longer drive to Blackpool than I'd originally given it credit for. 

Now last time, when I did a the Northern Universities Dance Competition (NUDC) in Chesterfield, I seemed to spend the majority of the day pretty high, scores wise. I headed out the door that morning coming in at 6.1mmol/l (109). Since my scores have still been rather....uncooperative as of late, I was very happy with that. As we pulled in to Blackpool, I was riding higher, at 13.2 (237), but a correction pulled me back down into range, and I was sitting pretty on 7.9 (142) as Round One of Beginner's Waltz started. 

Alice and I unfortunately got knocked out of this first round. This wasn't much of a surprise though, as I got hit on the head with someone's elbow, and then got rammed by two couples, right in front of the judges' table. Sadly, there aren't any more pictures of us dancing, mainly because our heats of Quickstep, and Jive all happened in a different room, and we just got missed in Cha-Cha. It's probably for the best, because every photo of me dancing ballroom makes me look like a have no neck. It's something of a cross between my still needing to learn better dance posture, and the picture being taken from behind me!

As with Waltz, we got knocked out of everything first round, which was a real shame, particularly for Quickstep, which went beautifully - I was fairly sure we'd progress to the following round. But such is life, and there's still Roses, and next year, although neither with Alice. And whilst I could easily believe that we got knocked out of each class, what I couldn't quite believe was what was happening with my levels. I'd been having such rotten numbers that it was like the Diabetes Fairy had waved some sort of wand over me for the day. Every number was acceptable! 5.3 (95), 7.0 (126), 5.5 (99), 8.2 (147), and so on! I'd decided on trying a grazing strategy, and somehow, it seemed to have worked!

Between the Ballroom classes and the start of the Latin, was the Off-beat competition. This is so much fun. Each university team gets 3 minutes 30 to do whatever they want. It's marked 50% on dance, and 50% on entertainment. Since our entry was a piece choreographed to 'Star Wars Disco Boogie', we were clearly going for the entertainment angle. See my kick-ass Ewok mask if you need further evidence. The whole thing was utter comedy, but apparently comedy that worked, considering we made it to 6th place out of the 12 entries. I maintain that we would have broken the top 3 if we'd had more rehearsal time!

By the evening, the individual classes were over, I was still coming in good at 5.6 (100), and we were all set to go with the team knockout competition. Alice and I were dancing Waltz for the C team (I had wanted to dance Quickstep, but hey ho, you go where you're put!). In an awesome move, all three of our teams got recalled to the quarter finals, and our A team came in 4th place in the 2nd division. Score one for York!

We eventually got back on the coach home at just after midnight, and a score of 4.9 (88), with the heating finally coming on at Leeds, and into bed, after showering off my orange skin, at about 3am. That's one crazy, and very, very long day. 

I don't know how I got such good scores. I need to look into it a bit more, I think. Shame I couldn't repeat it the other night though, when I was at a workshop on contemporary choreography for theatre. I ended up having a hypo halfway through, and spent the rest sitting on the sidelines, because I knew I was going down again after treating. 

Ah well. You win some, you lose some. Bring on Roses!

Posted by Becky at 00:09 | Labels: blog carnival, dance, dsma, exercise, hypers, hypos, numberwang, win | 3 comments |

So a few posts back, I told you that I had named my pump Anneka. I also said that I would explain why. So here goes.

I don't know if you guys in the US had anything like this, but back in the late 80's to mid 90's, we had a TV show called 'Challenge Anneka'. Wikipedia seems to think you had something called Challenge America, but dammit, we had it first! 

The premise of the show, if you're not familiar with it, is that the charming all-action heroine, Anneka Rice, would fix some terrible crisis, whilst wearing a blue jumpsuit. She also had a mobile phone, which was a really big deal in those days. The best part of the whole show though, when you were young, was the little animated hedgehogs in the opening credits. Seriously, I always thought they were adorable!

It always seemed that Anneka Rice could handle anything. So that was part of my reasoning behind calling my lovely Animas pump that. But after a number of Borg and robot related jokes, it's also a partial nod to the human name of Seven of Nine from Star Trek Voyager, which was Annika Hansen. Yes, I loved Star Trek as a teenager. No, I'm not really ashamed! But she was always calm, collected, and fiercely intelligent.

So my hope rather was that whichever Anneka/Annika she was taking after would be a good omen. At least they both had jumpsuits in common. Shame that so far, it's been a bit more of a challenge than anything Anneka Rice ever took on. 

I always remembered her building orphanages, and youth centres and the like. Seems that though she did this, she also did some far more bizarre things - 

Anneka has to trick a group of blind people that the wacky sound-effects played on her boombox are taking place in real life, in order to receive a donation to the Calibre Cassette Library.

Anneka has to cut a hole in walled garden in Chiswick to let some victims escape. 

Anneka helps a coward cross the road by building nice things on the other side, such as an ice cream parlour and dog salon. 

Anneka has to organise a tape of music in time for a leaving party. 

and of course, my personal favourite:

Anneka has to convince a group of scared school children that monkeys have not taken over the world and that they are just in a Dorset zoo.

As for me, I'm hoping not to have to challenge my Anneka to do any of these things. However, I have been dealing with an absolutely rotten cold for the past week, which has been making things much more of a challenge. I did mention that I'd been struggling with high scores. After seeing my team on the 6th, we'd made alterations to my basals in an attempt to try and sort things out. Of course the next day, this absolute beast of a cold makes an appearance. 

This is the first time I've been properly ill since my DX, so I wasn't sure what to really expect, bg wise. They've carried on being high despite corrections, putting on temp basals, and such. Thankfully no ketones have appeared. But the problem of course is that I don't want to make any huge changes, because when this cold has gone, it'd be hard to tell whether I'd made too many. So I think I'm just going to have to hang on in there, until it clears up, and make my changes then. 

But in the meantime, I suppose we could terrorise children with monkeys?

Posted by Becky at 17:35 | Labels: anneka, hypers, illness, pumps, type 1 | 2 comments |

Posted by Becky at 22:15 | Labels: appointments, hypers, pumps, sleep, type 1, university, work | 2 comments |

Some days are harder than others. I think we all know that. If you think I'm talking rubbish, then I'm sorry, but I think you're kidding yourself. 

Anyway. After trying to counteract a long string of higher numbers, I decided to up my basal, and my morning ratio. I overbolused for lunch on the first day of this, so I switched back to my old ratio. Still getting hypos. 

These hypos have had practically no warnings, which scares me. I've reduced my basal back, so fundamentally resetting all the changes. But was it the basal? Was it the bolus? Was it the hour workouts in the morning before breakfast or any insulin?

It is like I've got a bucket full of water that I'm trying to keep hold of. Shame the bucket is full of holes then, really, isn't it?

Training Update:
I've now doubled the weight of my dumbbells, so I'm now using two 10lb weights, instead of two 5lb ones. That means I've taken my sets down to 10 presses, 5 chest flys and 10 biceps curls. I've also switched from running a lap to doing free runs, so I can see the distance more accurately. 10 minute free run so far, has given me 2k 78m, and 2k and 69m. Hopefully I can break the 3k mark soon... 

Posted by Becky at 23:47 | Labels: exercise, hypers, hypos, injecting, insulin, training | 4 comments |

I have a bit of a list, that I add to as I think of things. It's not quite a 'bucket list', but rather a list of things that I've never done, and want to get round to doing.

So far this year, I've crossed climbing a tree off that list. I've quite a few things on there, which vary from visiting Italy to actually seeing a firefly. Between now and Sunday, I'm hoping to cross one, and possibly two things off the list. 

Number one is going on a boat. No, seriously, I've never done it. Lots of people find this bewildering, but I honestly haven't. Boat cruise down the River Ouse - oh yeah.

Number two isn't a definite, but a strong possibility. This is playing my guitar in front of people. Singing at the same time, obviously. Of course I've sung in front of people many, many times before, but I've never successfully made my way through playing a song on a guitar in public.

I'm very nervous about it, and I'm not sure if it will actually happen. I feel it's probably going to be more of a case of putting my guitar in the car, and seeing whether or not I chicken out when I get there. I'm having a lot of problems as well with my fingers causing me pain on the fretboards, where I lance. Serious ouchies. 

Anyway, I'll let you know what happens.

In other news, workout was HARD this morning. I did not want to get out of bed, and I almost stopped half way through, because my arms were hurting me an awful lot. Thankfully I managed to get through it.

Something went rather wrong with my bolus for dinner tonight, and I ended up at somewhere between 14mmol/l and 16mmol/l (252-288 mg/dl). Managed to do a decent correction though, and at last check I was at 4.9mmol/l (88mg/dl). So I'll probably end up actually having to eat something before going to bed, as it turns out!

Posted by Becky at 23:55 | Labels: bolus, exercise, goals, hypers, injecting, nablopomo, training | 1 comments |

Today has been difficult. I ended up having one of those hypos that isn't even that low, but ends up knocking you for six. Felt so grotty all day, and then ended up in double figures. Just lovely.

As I mentioned yesterday, I had a black tie drinks thing for a friend's birthday this evening. At about 18:00, I wasn't entirely convinced that I would be able to go. I'd been feeling totally shaky, sweating loads, and just couldn't seem to process things right. To be honest, I felt utterly rubbish. Yet I didn't want to let this win.

What I wasn't sure about though, was that if I went out for drinks, still feeling rough, would I then feel even worse for the whole weekend? Not a definite outcome, to be sure, but certainly a possibility. I wasn't willing to sacrifice my weekend for it, but I wanted to go.

I did end up going, and thankfully I seemed to level out and I started feeling OK. I think I might have been lucky though. It felt like it so easily have gone the other way.

Posted by Becky at 23:36 | Labels: being thankful, friends, hypers, hypos, nablopomo | 0 comments |

Ever had a puzzle that you just couldn't figure out? I've had a few of them in my time. I used to have a Rubik's cube, but I got so fed up of the damn thing that I ended up putting it in a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child. We also used to own a puzzle that was actually a birthday present for my brother one year - it was a plastic box that had 3-D Tetris style pieces. The idea was to take the pieces out of the box, and then put them back in again. Most annoying puzzle ever. I think I couldn't have been any older than ten or eleven when this puzzle arrived in our house. I'm twenty-five now, and no-one in my family has ever managed to solve this thing. 

Puzzles can be immensely frustrating, so it's completely understandable that sometimes people need help or clues to help them get through the difficult bits. Which is why I'm a huge advocate of testing. 

The whole management of blood sugar is a huge puzzle - to get it to play fair, you've got to track it and learn to spot trends. Which is why I can't wrap my head around people who say you can test 'too much', or that testing more than four times a day makes you 'obsessive'. 

I don't see it that way. We're all in the same game here, which is trying to manage this thing the best we can. How are you supposed to spot the clues to help you do that if you don't test? Personally I test at least seven times a day - before each meal, two hours after, and before bed. It quite frequently ends up being more than that. I would never just 'guess' at what my levels were, because I'm a human being, and I'm more likely than not to get it wrong. If I were to try and guess too often, and it turned out I was guessing wrong, what sort of damage could I be doing to myself? 

No-one likes testing. I mean, come on - it does hurt, and there's no getting round that. It's not like we do these things for fun. So why are people testing more than four times a day doing it? Well, I can't speak for everyone else, but for me, it's so that I can feel that it's me in the driving seat, rather than diabetes. I don't want to leave these things down to chance. I carb count, so I need to test before and after, so I can check I've got the count right. I would also never not check before bed, because I need to make sure that I'm about 5mmol/l (90 mg/dl), otherwise I need to have a snack.

Aside from this, I add on any time I feel hypo or hyper, before I exercise, before I go out with Andrew on the back of the motorbike, if I'm not feeling well. I've also taken to testing at 15:00 when I'm at the office, as I tend to slump around then, and I want to make sure that I have a snack if it's appropriate.

Of course, there's only a point in testing if you know what the numbers mean, and know what to do with them. Otherwise, your meter might as well sing Baa Baa, Black Sheep to you. But if you know what the deal is? Well then I firmly believe that then you should have the ability and necessary supplies to test as much as you need to. 

Would I call that obsessive? Nope, not a chance. I don't think it's obsessive, when it's under the provisos that I've just mentioned. It's proactive. I thoroughly believe that I'm being proactive in looking after my health and my future. We're in a social climate now where we're all being encouraged to take control of our own health and well-being. So when you've got maintaining the best blood sugar management that you're able to, added into the mix, then surely that's just following advice generally given to everyone? After all, it's not easy, and sometimes we all need a few extra clues.

Posted by Becky at 23:36 | Labels: goals, hypers, hypos, nablopomo, numberwang, technology, testing | 1 comments |

One of my (many, I'm sure) flaws is that I have absolutely terrible sleeping habits. Even I'm embarrassed by them. It's very rare that I'm in bed before midnight, and I'm a frequent oversleeper. I have two alarm clocks - one on my phone, and one old-fashioned clanger sort that goes like the clappers and is the size of a dinner plate. I still manage to sleep through them with alarming (I wrote that with genuinely no pun intended) frequency.

I need to get into a routine again. When I was at university, I'd be up all night quite happily, and I would be highly productive that way. I guess, in my mind, if I could do it then, I can do it now. But maybe I've changed? If I can drag myself out of my wonderful (but not as wonderful, and nowhere near as gorgeous as the one pictured!) bed earlier than I would like, I actually get a lot done early in the morning. My problem right now is how to get into a routine of up early, to bed early. I'm always tired!

Most of this is my own fault, and I'll admit that quite freely. However, I've found if I go to bed higher than I would like, I feel absolutely trashed in the morning. I don't know if this is true of anyone else, but it seems to be true of me. Case in point would be last night. Went to bed on about 13.9 mmol/l (250mg/dl), and woke up on around 7mmol/l (126 mg/dl). That's a fairly substantial drop overnight? Maybe it did something to contribute to the rather freaky dreams of last night. Something to chew over, I'm sure.

I remember bedtime routine as a child. My bedtime drink of choice was Vimto (do you guys have that in the States? It's amazing!) in a mug. The cordial version, of course. I don't know why it was always in a mug, but it was. I think tonight, to mark the start of my 'better sleep hygiene' (a weird term, surely?) might require Vimto in a mug. Then maybe I can start trying to get things done.

Posted by Becky at 22:23 | Labels: dreams, goals, hypers, nablopomo, sleep | 0 comments |