Coffee is my friend

We had dinner at our friends’ house last night and ordered pizza … Pizza continues to be a food that affects me differently every single time I eat it. I can try a normal bolus, or a dual wave, it doesn’t matter. I can look up the carb count and dose precisely for every single carb, and it doesn’t matter.   Last night was one of the nights that I was fine even at my 2 hour check .. but by bedtime I was in the mid 200s. *sigh*.   To make it even “worse” I needed a site change, and had to calibrate my CGM.  (Poor planning on my part, but I digress.)

I didn’t have enough insulin left in my pump to give the entire correction bolus, so first order of operation was the site change. I’d had it in my thigh for a few days and I can’t keep it in there as long as I can in my abdomen or hip – it is fine putting it in, and even for the first couple of days. But I’ve noticed those sites get irritated and itchy much quicker. So I can’t do the ol’ trick of adding to the reservoir to stretch out the site for a few more days … 

So I do my site change (in my hip this time), then give my correction bolus.  By now it’s probably 10ish pm.  Problem is … According to my pump, I have to calibrate at 1 am (I can look at my pump and it’ll tell me next time it’s going to scream beep at me to tell me to “Meter BG Now”.)  So what I would normally do is go ahead and calibrate before bedtime, since I have to be “steady” (sugars can’t be on it’s way up or down when I calibrate.)  BUT I just took that correction bolus.. so with any luck, they’ll be on their way down soon.  Hence, no calibration for a while.

I wait up for another hour and a half … they’re coming down, I’m around 150 now so I go ahead and calibrate. (Not ideal, but it’ll have to do. I’d rather do that then have it beeping at me all night, which I’ll likely continue hitting Esc/ACT to silence it for an extra few min of sleep – those of you MM wearers know exactly what I’m talking about 😉   )

Then 1 am hits. My hubby starts nudging me telling me I’m beeping.  Oops, sorry ’bout that. In my sleepy state, I assume it was to calibrate but when I turn the backlight on it says “Low Predicted”.  Hmm.  I hit “Esc” until I get to the actual BG reading and it says 86.  That’s not low. So I mumbled (still half asleep) “It’s just 86 – that’s ok. Must just be coming down from the 200s still, so it thinks I’m dropping.”

Go back to sleep.

But it keeps beeping. And I keep silencing it.

1:00 am

1:28 am

2:30 am

3:00 am

Finally around the 3 am mark, I start to not only hear the “Low Predicted” alarm, but I feel it.  It’s vibrating by now (if you ignore the beeps long enough, it gets really assertive and tries to shake you awake lol )  I check the screen and it says 66.  Hmm.  Maybe it knows what it’s talking about after all.  And not only do I feel the vibration of the pump, I also start to feel low.  This time I nudged my hubby, and asked him if he could get my meter and a juice box for me (normally I have both on my nightstand, but go figure – the one night I’m unprepared… )  He jumps up and goes to get them for me. Comes back, and I check. I’m 50. Damn it.  I should’ve listened earlier.   And people say this all the time …. how sometimes you can be low but don’t always “feel” it — until you see that number. Then out of the blue you start drinking/eating everything in site because you.must.fix.it.now.   I opted to stay in bed for that very reason.  I drank my Juicy Juice box and he asked if I needed anything else. I said no, I’ll give this a few minutes to kick in, and I’ll be fine. I dozed back off.

Then it beeps again at 3:28 am.  Ok, I figure the juice box hasn’t kicked in.   Then beeps again at 3:58 am.  Come on juice, start working already. My alarm is going to go off in 2 hours! Then 4:30 am.  And 5:00 am.  Ok by now, the juice should have kicked in.  5:35 am, 6:05 am, 6:35 am, and 7:04 am.  I check it this time and it’s 59.  *sigh*

I got up and get my glucose tablets.  Gave it a few minutes and disconnected for my shower.  All was well after that.  But I was sure glad to have that first cup of coffee when I got to work.