Lindsey Guerin

After the picnic last night, I was extremely tired. It'd been an incredibly long week, we'd just played all kinds of games, and to top it off my blood sugar was low. So I ate some fruit and mixed nuts hoping I wouldn't have to eat anything heavier right before crashing into my bed. But my blood sugar wouldn't come up, it seemed to only be dropping. I drank juice and ate crackers, intently watching the CGMS to tell me when it was rising.

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Lowering my A1c is my diabetes priority at the moment. I'm ready to bump down from the 7.3% that I've been stuck at for the last six months. I'm looking to get back under 7% and head towards 6.5% to achieve another "lowest A1c of all time." But today it hit me that lowering my A1c is really taking a toll on me.

Not only is it increasing my diabetes stress to do everything right (or at least the majority), but it's also creating a domino effect with quite a few other aspects of my life. Things that are "tolerable" but when combined make me wonder if it's worth it. I feel like I'm always in a state of "weighing the consequences:" do I try harder to lower my A1c or do I tolerate the 7.3% and avoid the ill effects?

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Thursday, my college youth group is having a Fourth of July picnic. I'm half excited, but half wary of all things food related. The diabetic in me is curious, anxious, and completely nervous about what will be served, how it was prepared, and so on. The diabetic in me is wanting to be a total control freak...but unfortunately, this isn't a situation where I can be. This situation calls for a little gambling and adventure-taking.

Ever since I started venturing out on my own, I've struggled with food. I want healthy choices. I want choices that won't send my blood sugar through the roof. And mostly, I want choices that I will actually eat (as I'm a fairly picky eater). All those things combined leaves me feeling like I have to make the restaurant choice or at least give plenty of acceptable options...while trying to make everyone happy in what they're putting in their own mouths.

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I've worked really hard the past few months to lose some weight. I've been eating better (cutting out fast food, "extras" like dinner rolls or second servings, and leaving the snacks on the snack aisle at the grocery store). On top of that, I'm working out about three times a week either at the gym or on the treadmill at home. And I'm proud to say that I've lost six pounds and several inches.

But the past week has thrown a major kink in my progress. I'm too scared to even step on the scale to see how these low and "lower" blood sugars are affecting me. I know my calorie intake has increased between the cokes, snacks, and extra carbs I'm consuming to offset these things.

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My blood sugars have been rocky in the last few days. I haven't made any insulin or exercise changes, but I've been staying fairly "low." And this evening, I hit rock bottom.

Most of my blood sugars have been in the 120's, which I'll take any day of the week. There have been a few 160's and an episode of 200's during my workout on Tuesday, but mostly I'm doing okay. Yet the bad lows are back.

Last night, I had a 56 a few hours before bed. And after juice and crackers, I was only 92. So I ate about 25 grams of LifeSavers and hoped for the best. Only to wake up to a 58. I ate breakfast, did insulin for the extra carbs, and headed to class.

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I've really been struggling with the Lantus and exercise mix. When I first started out, I did okay with a few lows here and there (nothing out of the ordinary for me). But as I added in new and different work outs and upped my intensity, I'm struggling to keep my blood sugars stable before, during, and after exercise.

With the pump, it was so easy to decrease my basal so I started my workout in the 180-200 range. I struggled with maintaining a higher level during exercise, often going low...but at least I wasn't concerned with those numbers completely wrecking my averages.

Now that I'm back on Lantus, I'm re-learning everything that I did five or six years ago (since high school held my hardest workouts). But I'm failing miserably. I can't get the range right before working out, often soaring to the 260's. And during, I'm flatlining in that same range.

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