fingerprickingood-blog

[fingerprickingood-blog]

The Cold Truth On Diabetes

Many people do not realize just how scary and awful diabetes are. Suffering from an untreated diabetic ketoacidosis ( DKA ) means that you are going to be dying a very agonising and painful death, friend.

When you have diabetes, you have too little insulin and very high blood sugar. Because sugar is corrosive to blood vessels and your blood develops a syrupy consistency, your arteries and veins start to scar. This is very bad for legs, which are the farthest from the heart and already have trouble getting blood. After a few years, nerves die from poor circulation and wounds stop healing ( this is why many diabetics have leg or toe amputations ).

Your kidneys are entirely made of blood vessels. As you can expect, too much sugar corroding and scarring those blood vessels become too damaged to filter water through. When your blood sugar is super high, your kidneys will compensate by squeezing sugar out through the blood filters and allow you to urinate them out. This, however, rips holes in your filters and is why many diabetics suffer from kidney failure and end up on dialysis.

The reason why many diabetics also suffer from strokes and heart attacks is also because the blood vessels in your heart and brain is ripped to shreds.

The real kicker however is that your now thick, dense, blood is now similar to a sponge. It sucks the water out of your tissues. When you enter a diabetic crisis, that is why you’re so thirsty. Undiagnosed diabetics can often be spotted by their inventory of couple gallon jugs of water. As soon as their blood thins out from the water from their tissues, their kidneys dump out all that water with all the sugar, which further rips them to shred. This is also why undiagnosed diabetics can be spotted by them peeing themselves in public or spend the most of their day peeing out their gallons of water.

We are not done yet though, here is a quick biology lesson about insulin: Insulin does not magically make sugar disappear. Your cells have their mouths locked shut to keep them from eating everything that passes their way, and insulin is the key that unlocks them to eat. If your body does not make insulin, your cells will starve surrounded by food. If your body is fat and all that fat is secreting endocrine to inform your body that you have enough food to last a month, your cells become insulin-resistant and it takes a lot of insulin to now unlock your cells.

Now, your cells cannot eat. Your blood is getting thicker from the onslaught of sugars, but your cells are are starving to death, being ripped apart by sludgy, razor soup, and having all of your water sucked out of them by spongey blood. Insulin also allows your cells to eat the potassium they need to keep your internal workings working, so now you have your potassium backing up, causing your blood to become acidic. In a last ditch attempt, your cells start burning protein, which is really fucking bad because it’s the cells tools and furniture. At this point, your cells are so bad that it’s like chewing on the table instead of the feast upon it in case the table is edible. You are literally starving to death.

Broken down proteins and fats produce ketone. Starving cells produce lactic acid. The combination of the two and all the extra potassium, your blood is now acidic. Before, your kidneys may have been able to compensate the sugars by secreting bicarbonate, but not anymore. That won’t be enough. The only other way your body can try to fix this ‘acid blood’ problem is by releasing a lot of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is acidic in blood. Now you’re suffocating. You’re suffocating, your body is starving, you’re dying of thirst, your blood vessels are shredded, and potassium is backed up in your in your blood so your heart’s muscle pumps are so overwhelmed that your heart just stops. And now you have died an extremely painful and preventable death.

TL;DR: death by diabetes includes; suffocation, starvation, dehydration, thick blood, kidney failure, and heart failure.

[fingerprickingood-blog]

The day I miscalculated my carbs and I felt like I was going to die

[fingerprickingood-blog]

Oh hey there!

[fingerprickingood-blog]

[fingerprickingood-blog]

Story of my life

Why is it that sometimes I can feel a hypo coming on, I take my blood and I’m at 101? 

Um excuse me body, but you f*cked up and let my pancreas die, the least you could do for me is be accurate in telling me when my blood sugar is dropping. Kindly get your shit together please.

[fingerprickingood-blog]

hello! fellow t1 diabetic here! can i just say, out of all the diabetic blogs i follow, yours has possibly the best url of all time and made me laugh out loud so good job!!

Hey there! Thank you so much haha it made me laugh too, but later found out it wasn't as original as I thought, a few other people out there have something similar, but it still makes me laugh every time I write something on here :D

[fingerprickingood-blog]

When you find out you forgot to bolus for high carb food

[fingerprickingood-blog]

First time for everything

So for the first time today I stupidly injected way too much for the amount of carbs I was going to eat for breakfast.

I woke up with fasting blood sugar of 200 mg/dl (11.1 mmol/L to the rest of world) so I injected... but I didn't eat quick enough and didn’t eat nearly enough to counter balance.  Lately I just haven’t been as hungry as I normally am and I’m putting it down to how bloody hot and humid it is at the moment in Dubai.

So anyway, my stupidity cost me my focus at work for the half of the day until I could get a grip of myself again which wasn’t until well after my lunch time. It just felt like I was walking against an invisible weight. So heavy. So exhausting.

I couldn’t wait to get home and relax and get my shit together to do it all over again tomorrow.

P.S I definitely learnt my lesson

[fingerprickingood-blog]

yass 

Me: hmmm, am I low? or am I having a panic attack? or am I having a panic attack because i’m low? or am I low because I’m having a panic attack? or am I just panicking too much about everything or

My brain and body:

[fingerprickingood-blog]

Basal Advice

What is the best time to take your basal injection?

I’ve been trying to experiment over the last 3 months to see if any difference is made and so far I think I see the best results when I take it at night, as I don’t wake up with such high blood sugar, but IDK if thats all in my head?

Advice? Tips?

[fingerprickingood-blog]

I mean,, dont blame ur pancreas technically its ur immune system to blame for attacking your pancreas like the homewrecker it is

[fingerprickingood-blog]

Your girl feeling fresh and new and positive for the future <3 

[fingerprickingood-blog]

This was my fasting sugars this morning.

I haven't woken up this high since I was diagnosed. I even did a double take at my meter this morning when I saw the little flashing yellow light.

Didn’t think twice about how I might feel later on. I’ve just been trying to push through everything at work and get myself fit confident enough to be able to push through most diabetic situations. So I went to work and 15 minutes in had my first wave of overwhelming tiredness and dizziness.  I’m so fortunate that I have the best colleagues I could ever ask for and they always look after me when I need a helping hand. I was able to get myself together to crack on for 5 more hours, my blood had gone up to 260 and then dropped down to 72 by 2pm, even as I was eating I had all sorts of feeling wash over me and I thought, I’m just gonna raise my hand up and admit defeat for today. I honestly feel that I gave it my best go, but today was just one of those days (which are becoming few and far between) where Diabetes just handed my ass to me and showed me it can knock me down without a need for an explanation.

I felt so guilty and admittedly hated myself a little for giving in, but at the same time I reminded myself of how well I’ve been doing recently to push through even when I’ve been feeling pretty down and even making it through 5 hours of work whilst juggling a fluctuating blood sugar felt like a massive achievement for me, but I really have to remember that there are just going to be days where it gets rough and that I need to put myself first, rest and try again tomorrow.  

[fingerprickingood-blog]

Fuck

[fingerprickingood-blog]

Ch-Ch-Changes!

[fingerprickingood-blog]

Catch ups

It’s been ages since I’ve written anything here. 

I’ve been meaning to, but sometimes I still find it hard to put all feels in words.

In terms of blood sugar, the instability is still in the same place, but I feel like I’ve been able to trust my judgement a lot more. I’m pretty good at being able to identify my symptoms early enough to treat it before it gets too serious.  I really feel like this has helped me become more confident when at work as well, even though I have at least one low a day, I know I can push through still and do my job. Yes I’m tired. Yes I probably don’t look ok. But I can still do the job with a smile on my face.

I decided to do something drastic to my hair since the last time I wrote anything. When I first met my hairdresser she said to me,

“when a girl changes her hair, it means she’s about to change her life” 

It really stuck with me since then (thanks Gem). So as I sat down in the chair and looked at myself, I made a conscious decision to take a deep breath and make peace with all the shitty things that have been happening in my personal and professional life, let go of what I can’t control and make best of the situations that I can.  When she revealed her magic work, I looked so different. It made me feel fresh and renewed and ready for my new outlook. 

I’ve also had my first Hb1c tests done recently, when first diagnosed, my levels were over 10, my first results since then came back as 6.3! I was pretty happy with it as I was expecting the number to be much higher.  I’ve been making a real effort to eat well and often. I’ve been losing weight slowly and healthily. I used to feel so yucky all the time - extreme tiredness and always bloated, but now even though I always feel tired, I feel like I have more energy than before.  I’m also so much more patient and relaxed like I was before I began showing symptoms for diabetes. I feel like I’m evening out a lot more and I hope it keeps getting better from here.

[fingerprickingood-blog]

Well... all I can say is that that 63 was definitely my fault. 

I couldn’t keep my eyes open at 1pm and decided to have a power nap, except that nap turned into a 3 hour sleep. By the time I woke up, I’d slept through what should have been my lunch time and I had no energy. Thankfully I checked  because I wasn’t sure if I was low or not (usually by 85 I’m starting to feel the drop and can intervene quick enough, but today was a bit different)

134 mg/dl was after drinking a mini can of coke and the 184 is after eating a cup of brown rice and chicken breast. 

*sigh* 

It’s been a tough 24 hours

p.s sorry bod, I’ll try to treat you better x