Diabetes management is really getting under my skin lately. I'm just so exhausted with it all. I never can seem to find a balance. I take one step forward then seem to take three hundred steps backwards. I know that it's all perspective and my control isn't bad, but it just feels like all the work I do has no payoff. But do I need to keep in mind that the pay-off may be 40 or 50 years from now?

If that's the case, I'm not so sure I want to make it. It isn't that I'm burnt out (and gee, don't think I'm suicidal). I'm just stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. Sadly, it seems like I've been stuck there for quite some time.

First, I couldn't get the right type of control on the pump. I was having too many lows, then too many highs, then too many of both. I'd work so hard to get the highs down then end up low then swing back high, all in an endless cycle. So I tried to change everything...to get a fresh perspective.

My fresh perspective was Lantus and Humalog. But here I am, three weeks into the whole ordeal and I still can't seem to find the patterns or the program that seems to work for me. My averages are down this last week, yes. But at what cost? Am I ruining my life right now to have a better tomorrow?

In the past week, I've had 7 blood sugars under 75. On paper, it doesn't seem like much. But when you're living life, it gets really annoying having to treat a low every day (and many times they are lows in the 40's or 50's). I get tired of eating the extra calories. I get ticked off by having to stop my life to regain my brain.

I guess I'm starting to wonder what I need to do to change all this. How many lows are acceptable...7 lows in 7 days? Do I need to stop stressing about avoiding the lows? I know that if I stopped trying to avoid them, my life would seem so much more fluid. I'd stop fighting what I cannot change. I just don't know if I'm at the point to stop fighting against these lows.

Since my averages are down, the highs are down as well. So that doesn't seem to be weighing so heavily on my mind. But it's still there...looming in the back of my mind. If I tweak to get rid of the lows, will the highs creep back up? What can I do to make them non-existent? All these questions, but so few answers.

I've been doing this tango with my blood sugars for over sixteen years. I'm so tired of dancing! I can't imagine doing all this for the rest of my life...for another sixteen years. I can't imagine when I'm 30 saying that I've been diabetic for 26 years when I know what kind of control that means. It means that I will always fight lows. I will always have to tweak to get rid of highs. I will always stress about the short term and long term effects of tight control. And I'm just tired of that. I'm tired of the eternity and the finality of it all. Why can't diabetes have an expiration date or something?!?!

I feel so frustrated and so lost. I'm looking for some sort of support, a mentor or guidance or something. I'm looking for someone to re-affirm that 7 lows isn't that abnormal and tight control always means having more lows than we want. I'm looking for someone else to take some of the load of this disease. I'm just looking for relief.