cotton.org

Most will call it dry mouth or cotton mouth , some might say they have a waterless windpipe or a parched palate, acting disturbed by their unquenched uvula, and yet another might compare it to having a mouthful of sweaters mucking up the place to no end. Whatever alliterative or clothed name it goes by, the sticky mouth feel of a high blood sugar is enough to furrow my brow to its limit.

It seems to be more noticeable to me recently. Certain moments of my day are highlighted not from a good laugh or scholarly accomplishment, but from an irritatingly high blood sugar and the need for a tall glass of water (and yes I mean TALL, as in large, not tall as in a 12 oz. Starbucks cup). I always check my blood sugar when this cue pops up. A test strip gets plunked into my OmniPod PDM and I feed it a drop of blood. A couple seconds wait and it registers a blood sugar number. The internal guts of the machine then go to work, doing the quick math, and a suggested correction bolus is calculated. Things start to look up soon after and my "thirst" is happily dissolved.

I will never forget the extremely heinous dry mouth I had right before my diagnosis. I recall downing a liter of Cherry 7-Up with the satisfaction only lasting mere seconds during the reflex of each swallow. All the carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, and red 40 in the world wouldn't satisfy my thirst. Such a miserable memory still sits with me and I don't welcome its return at any point in my day. This becomes just one more incentive to keep my blood sugars in check.

I had to have a brief laugh the other day, however, when I woke up craving some water. I was gearing up for a correction bolus from a high blood sugar caused by late night snaking, when a 120 mg/dL fills the PDM screen. Turns out I was just thirsty! Go figure, despite the electronics in my pocket and the pump on my thigh, I'm still human after all!