Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Little Mysteries . . . .

detectiveFor the past week or so, my blood sugars have been running high.  They weren’t hugely terrible, but mostly between 150 and 200 without a low in sight.  I was also having huge two-up-arrow spikes every time I ate, no matter what I ate and no matter how long I timed my pre-bolus.  I even went so far as to wait for my CGM to throw a “low-predicted” alarm before starting to eat.  It didn’t help one bit.

And then on Sunday, the highs just stopped.  Even during a birthday party I threw for Pete, with lemonade based cocktails and a chocolate peanut butter cake, I hovered in the 50s and needed to have some Starbursts.  It was crazy!

Of course, me being me, I want to know WHY my blood sugars completely misbehaved so I can fix it next time.  After some sleuthing, I’ve got three clues . . .  .
  1. I put my site back in my favorite spot - I get great absorption from (and have plenty of real estate for) “ upper-butt” sites.  But I still worry about building up too much scar tissue there, so I try to rotate around sometimes.  My previous two sites had been in my abdomen and upper arm.  I wouldn’t be surprised if neither of those sites worked all that well.
  2. Fresh insulin - When I changed my site on Sunday, it was time for a brand new bottle of insulin.  In fact, it was also from a new batch.  When I fill my prescriptions I get three bottles of insulin at a time. It could be my imagination, but often it seems that third bottle doesn’t quite work so well.
  3. Girl stuff - I know this is TMI, but my period started on Sunday.  Yeah, happy birthday to my husband.
So those are my clues.  But diabetes makes it hard to be Sherlock Holmes, because I can’t quite solve the mystery.  Was it the site rotation?  The new insulin?  The hormones?  Any combination of the three?  I suppose this will just have to go into the cold case files.

6 comments:

  1. Perfect storm of all three?

    (also, I LOL'd at #3. Hope your hubby had a happy bday regardless).

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  2. We are thinking along the same lines this morning! Just wrote a post today about how my period (and the hormone changes around it) affects my sugars. I have *definitely* been seeing higher sugars in the week or 2 before my period, then right at period time, wham - low they go. It's a blessing, and a curse :), and probably one of those things we'll never be able to figure out 100%.

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  3. Ah that was me a few weeks ago! It's so frustrating how many variables there could be to explain highs. At least you had an excuse to eat Starbursts-I love them :)

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  4. This is totally me over the last 2 days. I'm hoping with new insulin and new site (changed last night) I'll see lower numbers. So frustrating!

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  5. Hmmm... I hate that. My problem has been opposite, if you can call it a problem. I've been under 150 probably 85%of the time with lots of lows and few highs over the last maybe two weeks. Lows haven't been so bad that I'm concerned, just wondering what is going on. No, I'm not pregnant.

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  6. This has been happening to me too. Maybe it's the change in season???

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