Day 4 - Living with Diabetes Part 1

In this series of blogs that are to come I will be writing about a point relevant to diabetes that I go through in my day to day living and show how different a lifestyle it can really be, and to show, to the best of my knowledge through living with diabetes, biological functions, that I would be more than pleased to be corrected on, so do not fear leaving a `snarky` comment correcting me, I like to learn more and cross reference material with others; I may expand on such things as insulin, like how it is made, the resources needed to make it, the affects on the environment, monetary factors, and this will be a learning process for myself because much of what I just suggested I may write about I will need to do research as well.

Since this is the intro blog

Let me take you through my day.

Mornings: Wake up at 18:00-19:00, due to working nights in which I have to severely consider how much activity I am doing due to the affects of physical exercise and insulin sensitivity within my body, have to consider how much food I eat…there are many things that I could extrapolate upon in regards to work and diabetes - lets just title that work and leave that there for now.

I proceed to check my blood sugar, usually - have not been the spitting image of `perfect` in regards to diabetes - which again is something to take apart and dissect = the image of perfection within diabetes = perfection of care of health possibly - I'm sorry if I ramble, but as I write this I am noting this for myself later on so that I can refer back to it for topics to write about. And in the mornings I have been frequently high, so as I wake up, I've kinda just accepted this as `the way it is`, and reach for two needles that I have to inject 25 decilitres of one insulin, and depending on how high, or if I'm high, x amount of decilitres of another insulin into either my buttocks, the back of my arms, abdomen, or thighs. I favour the buttocks, thighs, and back of the arms for the insulin I inject 25 decilitres of ( I will go into further detail in time on the different types of insulin) and the abdomen for the insulin that I use depending on how much I eat and what the `level` of (my) sugar is.

I make breakfast, and consider what I will be doing in the following hours based on activity level of what I can and should not eat, and usually say "fuck it, I will eat what I would like to eat and inject insulin according to what I would like to eat", and sometimes all I like to eat in the morning is an apple and a banana. I will then inject insulin based on how much carbohydrates I will eat and what I will be doing in the next few hours and based off of `how I feel` meaning if I feel `heavy` then that usually means that the insulin sensitivity rate is low and I will need more insulin than if I were to not feel `heavy`. I then carry on with whatever task I have for the time being until I get ready for work

Before work I check the sugar again at about 21:30 - it is about 2 hours after my previous test - so that means that the insulin that I injected to correct the amount of food I ate will be at it's `peak activity` which I will explain another time, and since it is at it's peak activity the rate of transfer of sugar into the cells is highest here throughout the 4 hour lasting time of the injection and means that I need to consider if I need to eat before work in order to maintain a level sugar throughout the first period of work or if I need to inject more insulin to get myself to a stable point during work. If all is well then I make a lunch, which I stick to a routine within, meaning I usually eat the same thing each lunch so that I can work with minimal factors influencing the sugar level and stick to a routine that I have become adapted to at the moment.

Work: (23:00-7:00) Since it has become warmer recently I now bike to work that is about 15 minutes of activity which I have to consider how hard I am biking because as I get to work the insulin that I injected when I woke up will change sensitivity and it will affect the sugar level during the first period of work - so I suppose I can mention here that recently I have been going low just before work starts and usually eat a banana to correct it….since I started working nights, and even previously within the job that I do, days that I am not low during work is a rarity and I always carry 3 bananas with myself along with `emergency sugar` which is a candy that I will bring along because of the pattern shown throughout the time that I have been working. Since the job that I do is physically demanding I have to keep in mind when I've injected insulin and how much I've injected, like .5 of a unit will make a drastic change in the sugar level throughout the next period of work, and since it is physically demanding I need to cut back the amount of insulin that I would normally inject, which took a bit of time to figure out how much I needed to inject for the food that I ate, which is why I stick to the food routine. The sugar levels during work are usually in the `acceptable range` (4mmol-8mmol) and I suppose that is due to the physical activity and the balancing of sugar correction throughout the periods of work. A point to mention here, that I will write about later, is the affect of adrenaline and noticing the symptoms of being low.

Getting home/school: (7:00-12:00) When I get home the sugar level is normally good because of the work that I just did and the affects of activity, although there have been times where I have been high returning from work which I do not exactly know the reason for, but have based it on the fact that I slow down my activity during work near the end of the night. I test my blood sugar and only eat something small like an apple because when I did eat cereal or something high in carbohydrates the time during school I would be running high for a while and correcting the sugar during school has been a pain in the ass for sometime because if I am high and I need to correct the sugar, the affect of dropping in sugar level is similar to the experience of being low and I find it incredibly hard to concentrate when this is happening, so I decided to eat something small which I normally don't need insulin for, because of the activity of work, which has been supportive recently since I do not experience too many lows during school any longer and thus can concentrate a lot better, not to mention give myself the ability to process the information. During school I inject 23 decilitres of insulin again. I used to be very self conscious about injecting insulin in front of people to the point where I would not inject insulin when eating if I was in public which was quite dangerous now looking at it.

When I get home from school, I test again, eat, inject insulin and sit down for about 2 hours studying if I need to or fall asleep. Eating so early to bed has been a problem and is most likely the cause to the morning highs, although I have noticed some other factors that can really influence the sugar level in the morning such as stress or simply resistance to working on something.

In the next posts I will certainly go into much more detail and take apart many aspects of a diabetic life and expand on the relationship lines between each aspect, but for now I hope that this overview gives you an insight into what a diabetic lives with and has to consider on a daily basis, and possibly information that you can apply to your own life.

Day 3 - Why do I Need Math?

In the math course that I am taking I had to ask myself where and how am I able to apply this math and why do I need this math if I am not going into a math program in university but a science program in university - and where in my life am I able to effectively use this information, or when am I ever going to use the information that I am learning in my life and the answer was staring me in the face which is diabetes

So within the Math course that I am taking we are learning how to factor polynomial equations, how to solve equations, how to create the equations out of word problems, how to graph the equations etc, and for the most part I cannot see a relevant point in my life where graphing would come into play and I cannot yet see the entire applicability of the understanding of the equations and the ability to factor the equations to solve for x or to simplify the equations to get to the main factors that are making up the equation, but in looking at the word factor it is easy to take this approach to diabetes and sugar levels where within a day there are many many many factors in play, such as insulin sensitivity, insulin dosage, insulin types, exercise, stress, foods, types of foods like fats or carbs or fibre that will either increase or decrease the rate of break down and absorption of sugar, emotional responses, depression, anxiety, sleep, positivity, socialization, negativity, anger…those are all the ones off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's more - anyways, all of those factors can and do influences the blood glucose level during each day. So like Stress+Fatty Food+Exercise+Long acting insulin+6 units of Short acting insulin = 9.8mmol/l - its obviously not that simple in regards to the addition or subtraction equation because many factors affect and influence the other factors and can make the other factors stronger or weaker causing sugar to rise or lower during the day and what this math is useful for is being able to factor out a factor that may be causing the blood sugar to be high during regular times of the day or causing the sugar to be low during regular times of a day - and in this find out an appropriate equation including all the factors to best be able to control blood sugars and keep them as stable as possible throughout ones life.

This is beyond my capability within math at this point but nonetheless there is no excuse for myself to understand and apply this math because I can use it to my benefit by creating a daily equation of what to do and when to do it based on factors that raise or lower the blood glucose levels - which most type 1 diabetics do when calculating how much insulin to inject during specific times of the day when the carb to insulin unit ratio varies between the times of the day. And in starting to understand this math and start to really apply myself in this math I can start to better myself by making the injections mathematically supported instead of a guessing game which I am essentially doing now - meaning guessing how much the exercise that I've done will affect me and thus guessing how much insulin to inject for the food that I ate during before or after exercising, but by recording the factors that I go through that have been proven to influence the sugar levels and factoring out the sugar levels or increasing or decreasing specific types of insulin at specific times of the day when/as those factors are present I can create an equation of how to best keep the sugar levels stable as those factors are present

I started to see this better as I was visiting the endocrinologist that I see, and as we were looking at the highs and low patterns and what was possibly influencing the readings she suggested decreasing or increasing types of insulin during those times of injection prior to injecting the insulin and changing around the equation of the insulin meaning changing the times and amounts of injections to best support myself when waking up or during work or while at school etc, and the way that I see this is a simplistic form of managing myself in diabetes because, especially during exercise, the sugar levels and insulin sensitivity dramatically changes and has been a struggle for myself to keep `level` as I exercise or work due to the dramatic change in insulin requirements during those specific times and I've also had difficulty finding the correct insulin dosage amounts prior to working or exercising because within an hour of rest the insulin sensitivity can change and if I do not work as hard as I worked near the end of the shift the amounts of insulin that I need when I get home and eat a meal change drastically. That being said giving self self awareness within the factors that are influencing the sugar levels is best for support and to give self that awareness the thoughts/emotions/feelings within the mind need to be eradicated as I've shown myself many times before that by allowing myself to entertain myself for a few moments I quickly forget to inject the basal rate insulin at the regular time and thus cause the sugar level to be affected differently at different times of the day/night

So when one has diabetes, math is an important subject to understand and apply at the level of factors and factoring out factors and finding factors and creating equations based on factors and sometimes unknowns so that one can create an equation for self based on ones owns needs and requirements of insulin and/or exercise etc, that include what to do when specific factors are involved in the resulting sugar levels. Essentially I wrote this because I've had a resistance to math and have struggled in the past course in math and so this is a point of motivation for myself to start to apply it in my daily living instead of simply seeing numbers on the board and only knowledge of the methods and ways to manipulate the equation to find the factors within the equation