Diabetes Decisions

The Thinker

Life is an endless list of decisions. It can be as mundane as what socks we're going to wear today or something as serious as a relationship or job choice. Whoever you are, decisions are an inevitable part of life.

Diabetes isn't a decision, largely. I know Type 2 Diabetes can be avoided or delayed in SOME people but for individuals like me, with Type 1 Diabetes, it's not a choice. What comes after a diagnosis of T1D is a new life of decision making. Your old life decisions will still exist, of course but now you've got to find some extra thought capacity for the decisions that diabetes brings.

"180!" is the joyous cry at a game of darts, when a player scores the maximum. It's also estimated to be the number of extra decisions a person with T1D makes in a single day. Let's do some easy maths:

- You're a light sleeper and you manage 6 hours of sleep per night

- For 18 hours you're awake.

- You're making, on average, 10 diabetes related decision per hour.

- A decision every 6 minutes.

- 1,260 decisions per week.

- 65,520 decisions per year.

I'm in year 36 of T1D. Go ahead and pop those numbers into your calculator. Little wonder that I've started to lose a tiny amount of head hair.

Even as I wrote those numbers, I had to double check that it's right. It seems that it is. Of course, your diabetes may vary. I know that if you're sleeping for longer and using closed loop for your insulin delivery and BG management then your decision making is likely to be much less of burden on you. You're still making decision but probably a lesser amount. If you're struggling with diabetes burnout then your decision making may be vastly reduced or even nil.

It's not just the numbers, though. It's the magnitude of the decisions made. Each day, I average 8 injections of a substance that could easily result in my death. A mis-calculation is very common. That means a corrective injection or eating/drinking something carby to stop my blood glucose from falling too low. The latter being of my immediate concern but the former can also result in life altering complications and/or a shortening of my life. Those decisions to a non-diabetic or a person recently diagnosed must seem enormous and incredibly stressful.

They are.

Of course, the majority of T1D management is simply a persistent monotony. I once described it as 99% boredom, 1% sheer terror. That's because the decisions I make are mostly around what I need to inject to cover the activities and carbohydrates in my day to day life, needle changes (and lancets!), sensor changes, ordering prescriptions, attending appointments, giving up bodily fluids into little containers and handing them strangers... you get the idea. It's not exciting, thankfully! I'm pretty pleased with the boring. The last thing I want is an exciting chronic illness which might kill me.

Boring doesn't mean easy. I do the boring to avoid the terrifying or, at least, minimise the terror. I'm still here so I guess things are going alright, right now. 

There is hope! and it's about time that I put more positivity into my blog. Technology reduces the decisions and the burden of T1D. I say that with the strongest conviction. I don't "loop" and I don't "pump" but simply using a CGM has helped to lighten my load dramatically in the last few years. It seems that pumping and looping (?) is a natural progression for me and I have no doubt that those progressions will lighten my load further. Of course, I hope for a cure but I'm realistic. I'm 44 years old and that probably won't happen in my lifetime but I do think that technology will continue to advance and make the T1D decisions for me. Perhaps 180 will only be associated with the darts, one day in the future.

Thank you so much for reading this blog. I do appreciate your visit and your support. As you might know, I LOVE COFFEE! So I've teamed up with a thing called Buy Me A Coffee. If you enjoy my content and appreciate the time it takes to create such things then you can buy me a coffee! If you leave your Twitter @ name when you buy me a coffee, I will personally thank you. If you'd rather be anonymous then that's totally cool. Thanks for the caffeine!

BUY DIABETIC DAD A COFFEE HERE

 

Use The Force

 

Do you ever look at a meal, a plate of food, a snack and just know what the carb count is? Maybe you've gone a step further? Not only do you know the carb count but you know exactly what to bolus and when to bolus to get your blood glucose back into range, soon after you've eaten.

Do you sit there, feeling all smug like some kind of diabetic Yoda? Good! You probably should. Diabetes is work and getting things right is something to celebrate.

I think we "use the force" in many aspects of life, particularly health. I'm willing to bet that some of you have guessed what dose of pain relief you needed for a headache. One paracetamol... two... maybe two with a couple of Ibuprofen, a few hours later. Wow! it worked. The headache is gone. Headache Jedi, we are. (sorry)

I'm not sure Obi Wan & co. can take the credit for our health treatment successes. I think this is because we know our bodies and how they react. Sometimes we make conscious decisions about our health and sometimes things just seem to go into autopilot. Sadly, as we age and get more experience of ill health I think we retain a subconscious knowledge which we call upon when treating common ailments or, indeed a chronic condition such as diabetes which we've become conditioned to living with.

You might refer to the bolus doses and carb counts as guesses but, after a while with diabetes, I'm not sure that's entirely true. All those meals and injections (or pumps), the maths, getting it right or wrong and the information presented to us or felt by us physically - does it just vanish or is some of it stored inside our heads beyond memories of the events? Easy, Diabetic Dad, this is getting deep.

Take hypos. (Please take them!?). We're told what to consume when we're below a certain level of blood glucose. If you're dropping 0.1mmol every 5 minutes and you've just crept into the red zone then sure, you might stick to the rules and eat the recommended amount of carbs because you know you're not in any real danger. If you're dropping 0.5mmol every 1 minute, you're shaking, rapidly heading south and your back looks like a waterfall then you're unlikely to be sticking to the rules because you're not thinking clearly, you might be panicking and hypo hunger is a real thing sometimes! Yet, you probably realise that you're in greater danger at that stage. You probably realise that counting out 6 Jelly Babies isn't very important. You probably realise the only number that needs to be given any attention is the one on your BG meter or CGM. Let the feasting commence! That may have happened to you previously. It's certainly happened to me; a time where little thought or brain power is used, it's all action and a carb frenzy. Then you feel better. Later you're a little high but you're not in danger so your brain drops out of survival mode and you calculate your insulin correction dose. Of course, some of you might be lucky enough to have the technology which informs you of you insulin on board, the speed of the decline of your blood glucose and how many fast acting carbs you'll need to consume. But... perhaps you have that tech and you still go overboard because of survival autopilot.

I know I've used the words "You" and "Your" and "You're" several times, there. That is just a generalisation of what some people living with diabetes might have done, including me. I do dislike talking about the diabetes of others in a way which must reflect my lived experience. That would just be terribly wrong of me.

Moving on! and to conclude, I think we as people with diabetes, regardless of type, are under tremendous stress and we carry a huge burden by simply living with our condition. The number of additional decisions made per day, compared to a person without diabetes, is huge. Those decisions require brain power which can sometimes be utterly exhausting. I think it's entirely normal to sometimes trust in your instincts, subconsciously act and "use the force" to act or react in regards to your diabetes management.

Thank you so much for reading this blog. I do appreciate your visit and your support. As you might know, I LOVE COFFEE! So I've teamed up with a thing called Buy Me A Coffee. If you enjoy my content and appreciate the time it takes to create such things then you can buy me a coffee! If you leave your Twitter @ name when you buy me a coffee, I will personally thank you. If you'd rather be anonymous then that's totally cool. Thanks for the caffeine!

BUY DIABETIC DAD A COFFEE HERE