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Sometimes all it takes is a swift kick in the ass.

Late last week I emailed several of my friends who also have diabetes with this problem: I'm spking high and low after nearly every meal. I can't seem to even have a NutriGrain anymore without issues.

They all agreed that my situation sucked. Maybe increase your basals, they suggested. Maybe it's time to switch insulins, they said. Have you stopped exercising, they wondered. Are you, you know, eating right, they questioned.

While my eating habits are not the greatest, I assured them, these crazy spikes were happening even when I was eating by the book. These blood sugar spikes were insane: the line on Dex looked like a capital W. 

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I received my A1c results from my endo appointment today. They are not at all what I expected them to be. It was 9.3%, which is up from June's 9.1%. The frustrating part is that I expected it to be back in the 8s because the numbers and averages that I've seen are much lower than this summer. (Except for this week as I've been fighting with extreme spikes and random lows). I'm incredibly disappointed by 9.3, even though I realize that it could be much worse and it's a small change from June.

I'm just not the type of diabetic who handles 9% very well. As a child, I struggled with my numbers but rarely hit above 10%. I remember a 13% one time and nearly freaking out. At 23 (almost), I expect more even numbers and less variables. I expect to see some decline in my A1c, not spikes since I graduated college.

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After several days of using relatively unused abdominal real estate for my infusion sites, I've determined that I had most likely worn out the prime spots, which resulted in some pretty horrendous blood sugar spikes. I guess I should have known it would happen.

I have tried in the past to move my sites around. I've gradually moved toward my love handles, I've moved north before, I've even tried a thigh site with less than desirable results. In fact, the results were terrible. Terrible enough that I either yanked the sites after just a few hours or went back to the tried and true spots.

Perhaps I should have been more patient. (Story of my life, right?)

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My blood sugars are in a world all their own lately. Last weeks averages are in the 200's...something I haven't experienced in probably three to four years. Even between sick days, periods, and holidays, my averages never top 190.

But last week was a total landslide in the diabetes realm. My body is telling me something, although I'm not positive what it is. And unfortunately, those blood sugars are now telling my body something else as they've wreaked havoc on my immune system, my energy level, and my concentration.

I really did try to work on my list of diabetes "to-do's" over the past week. I stopped forgetting my Lantus injections and I only let a bolus slide once or twice. I didn't check as much as I should have, nor did I get any more workouts into my routine. But I was hoping the slight increase in positive diabetes behavior would have a decreasing effect on those blood sugars.

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Ever since I got my pump, I stopped logging my blood sugars. Typically, I kept a running chart of every blood sugar categorized by time of day and weekly averages. But since the pump stores all of my information and produces such wonderful graphs, I stopped logging.

However, those graphs do not show specific blood sugar trends on a weekly basis and the numbers are never directly in front of me (haunting me at times). So I decided that I would get back on the logbook wagon.

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Charlie's ice hockey session ended yesterday. After a rocky start – which I wrote about recently – I must say; blood sugars have worked out beautifully.

Without too much trial and error, we found a routine that worked and stuck with it for the remaining four weeks of the hockey program.

I tested him just before he took the ice, unplugged him and gave him a 20-carb banana (with no bolus) to cover the intense workout. Unsure how it would work out in the beginning, careful disconnection of his pump felt like an attempt to dismantle a bomb. "Work damn you! Work!"

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I got my blood work results in the mail last week. All the usual suspects...kidneys, CBC, liver function, thyroid...came back within normal ranges. But my A1c was totally off the charts.

Back in July, it clocked in at 7.2%. I wasn't surprised by that because I'd switched from the pump to Lantus and had a few bumps along the way. I was also struggling with getting my exercise numbers into a decent range. So 7.2% was good, all things considered.

But now, my A1c has jumped to a whopping 8.6%. It hasn't been that high since 2007 when I wasn't taking care of my diabetes at all in the midst of college and living on my own. I have to say that this result totally shocked me. I want to say that something is off, something has to be off!

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Diabetes is a unique disease in many ways.

One way that I never really realized until recently is the guilt it places on the patient.

With other diseases, your doctor is in control of everything. Your medicine, how often you take it, and how much. But with Diabetes, the patient is the one who has to manage it. So when there is a problem, the patient gets blamed.

But is that fair? Sure, I know that I decide if I am going to take my insulin on time, or bolus correctly. I am the one who either chooses to exercise or not and eat healthy foods or not. Those are up to me.

But, tell me this, who is to blame when I take my insulin correctly, exercise, do everything right, and for no reason my blood sugar is 270?

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Charlie got happy on Saturday. Happy to the tune of 520 mg/dl.

For several reasons, if we have something fun planned for the kids, we don't divulge the news until the very last moment. This is because A. – it's really annoying to hear "is it time to go yet?" over and over again for weeks because they can't comprehend the concept of time or understand the complexities of calendars,  B. – we don't want them to be disappointed if for some reason we can't go, and 3. – it's really annoying to hear "is it time to go yet" over and over again for weeks.

When we went to Disney, we kept that secret for months. They found out we were going to Disney about three hours before our flight to Orlando was to depart.

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