We'll make it out of here

I was folding laundry with The Cardigan's Gran Turismo album on my speaker and the lyrics from the song "Higher" resonated: "Come take me high above our time, we'll make it out of here...I won't feel like this forever, you wait with me because you know, there's so much more than this before we go." If you've read my previous posts, you will know I hit a climatic critical stage with this illness over winter, particularly December and January. For the last five months, I've been using the Humalog Jr. pen exclusively and wearing the Dexcom G7 sensor and I feel exceptionally more stable - more stable than ever. I have no more low blood sugars. I rarely go above 135-140, which I have achieved through an extremely strict but nutrient-dense diet, impressively consistent accuracy from every G7 sensor, and low doses of Humalog (I only administer 1.5 units max at a time with my diet - a few times I've done 2 units). My once daily long-acting Tresiba dose has stayed the same at around 14 to 15 units. According to the Dexcom data, my A1C is around 5.8-6.0 with no lows. The shots don't bother me - 4 to 5 in a day is commonplace and it's as familiar to me as brushing my teeth now. For me a restricted, very low carbohydrate diet that consists solely of a salad or a steamed fresh vegetable with a protein for every meal is the absolute only way I can manage this disease with complete ease and relatively normal numbers. I’m a severe Type 1 diabetic that clinically looks like the low end of pre-diabetes so I consider that a hard-won victory. A serving from a bag of pre-seasoned Mediterranean vegetables brought my blood sugar to 300 one time, which was horrible in the moment but kind of makes me laugh now because it’s like wow ok, really?! They were clearly fibbing on the carb count on the back. I haven’t bought anything but fresh vegetables from the produce section since. The minimal half-unit doses on the insulin pen allow a greatly reduced risk of hypoglycemia. Otherwise, I’m playing Russian Roulette every single day with my life. The one minute of pleasure I get from eating a slice of pizza or pesto ravioli (sigh…), which used to be my absolute favorite at this restaurant called The Wine Exchange in Tampa’s Hyde Park, will now result in hours of a dangerous blood sugar roller-coaster nightmare. It’s just simply not worth it. If you saw what I had to go through you'd feel the same. I’m hyper-focused on the disease instead of my life and my passions and definitively putting myself at risk of complications and death. 

There was a time before I want to call it ... my lowest point in this disease. And it certainly will be forever, because there's nowhere else to go from this point but death. I actually don't want to get into it too much other than to say the deeply unsettling feeling of how extremely close I really did come to dying very much lingered with me like a shadow. The other scares I had before were nothing compared to this. It was unfathomable how strong my previous fast-acting insulin had suddenly become and how quickly my blood sugar plummeted. Faster than a lightning strike. I remember getting up the next morning late. The drapes were open in the living room and as I was walking to the kitchen for coffee a vivid red flashed very bright in my peripheral vision. When I turned to look, I saw a beautiful cardinal sitting on the basketball hoop in the driveway. I rarely see them around the front of the house. This was the start of a new cycle that led me to where I am today, which I want to say is safe now, and feeling so, so enormously better.

A couple of side notes: I downloaded a monthly hormone tracker because I noticed that when my estrogen is highest, so is my insulin sensitivity. And when it's lowest, I'm noticeably more insulin resistant. I want to do a comprehensive post about this. I thought possibly drinking hops-infused sparkling waters may help when I'm lower in estrogen? I've also been reading about estrogen inducing choline production and that is very interesting to me. 

There also seems to be some debate about the upcoming distribution of CGMs over the counter for non-diabetics to purchase. I am all for it. A great deal of diabetics and pre-diabetics are currently undiagnosed. I wish they were available OTC, popular and widely-used before August of 2018, that's for sure. They could be life-saving.