Sugar, we're going down

Been a while, hasn’t it?!

For one reason or another, the past month has been one of the busiest ever. I have had hen do’s, weddings, started a new job, and have been busy every single weekend since I wrote my last blog.

Annoyingly, this has meant my ‘honeymoon period’ with my pump is well and truly over.

There has been a decent amount of yoyoing, and quite often just a strip of yellow across the top of my libre screen – aka slightly high, but not terrible, sugars. But I have been so busy, and I really cannot tell you how inconvenient hypos are, so I sort of haven’t minded the higher sugars that much. But I think, in avoiding these lows, my sugars have been knocked slightly off track.

On that note, I thought I would talk a bit about hypos. After my last blog, a few people mentioned that it would be good to understand the basics of diabetes – and what better way to start, I suppose, than with the very thing I’ve been trying my hardest to avoid.

A hypo – or hypoglycaemia – is when your blood sugar level drops dangerously low; anything lower than 4.0 is considered a hypo. They make me feel absolutely rotten; I get a headache, feel sick, tired, and hungry, get confused and irritable, my vision goes a bit dark and blurry; the best way I can describe it is it makes me feel quite drunk (and not in a good way!).

You treat a hypo with fast acting glucose – so Dextrose tablets, a sugary drink, Jelly Babies, etc. – basically, if you think a diabetic shouldn’t be eating it, it’s probably a good hypo treatment. Sometimes, though, it’s a bit late for these, and you need HypoStop; a disgusting gel that is basically just glucose, which you (or, if it’s really bad, someone else) rub into your gums, or a Glucagon injection (if the person isn’t able to take any treatment by mouth); or, worst case scenario, call an ambulance.

Understandably, I hate hypos; but as a kid, I actually quite liked them. I got to eat sweets, and then some sort of treat, like a chocolate bar, biscuit, or ice cream… it was sort of fun. In year 6, I learnt that if I told my teacher I was hypo at break time, he would, without question, let me have one of the mini chocolate bars he kept in his classroom cupboard for me – the poor man was obviously terrified of me passing out in his care, and I completely played him. I had to use it to my advantage in some way, right?!

And once, probably around the same time I was conning my teacher out of chocolate bars, I did way, way too much insulin with breakfast one morning. My friends had slept over the night before, and they had a mountain of sweets and chocolate with them (lucky non-diabetic kids!). I remember doing my insulin, and instantly realising I’d done 21 units of insulin, instead of about 6 (I had mixed up my fast and slow acting – I’ll get to this another time!). I completely panicked… and then realised I had a day of eating literally whatever I wanted ahead of me – what a treat! I went straight up to my friend and demanded her leftover Galaxy bar, then told my mum we HAD to go to McDonalds. It was a great day – for about 3 hours, and then I thought I might die from how disgustingly full I was.

Anyway, back to the present. The older I get, the more I despise hypos. There aren’t that many treatments left that don’t make me feel a bit sick – I can’t stand Lucozade, Dextrose feel like they clog up my mouth with powdery sugar (they also make me cough – can anyone relate?!), and even my favourite flavours of Jelly Babies just taste like pure disgusting glucose these days.

Plus, no matter how organised you try to be, at some point you’re going to forget to stock up on hypo treatments. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve stood staring into the kitchen cupboard in dismay, in the middle of the night when I can’t even send Brendan to the shops, looking for hypo treatments and seeing nothing, and knowing I’m going to have to resort to the very last thing I want to do - grab a spoon, and get the honey, sugar, or jam out of the cupboard… and spoon it straight into my mouth. Drastic times call for drastic measures, I guess.

Oh, and I can’t really talk about night time hypos without mentioning the night sweats. They are truly tragic. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, absolutely soaking and literally lying in a puddle of sweat. It’s so gross. I’ll treat my hypo and get ready to go back to sleep… forgetting my bed is soaked. I’m usually so glad to be able to go back to sleep that I just get in bed and don’t really care – until I wake up freezing a little while later. It makes for a really good nights sleep…

Hypos are WEIRD with the pump. The nurse who trained us with them told us to just treat a hypo as normal, and not to turn off our insulin… but that seems so wrong, and kind of scary to me? The thing is, though, she’s (obviously) right. Almost every time I’ve had one since getting the Omnipod, I have turned my insulin either off completely, or right down, and treated my hypo at the same time.

And that leads me to one last thing – the post-hypo highs. It’s a fine line between not having enough glucose, having just the right amount, and having too much – and I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but I am pretty scared of hypos – so I almost always over-treat. This means some pretty high sugars, and those bring with them some pretty crap symptoms of their own – but I’ll come back to those, I’ve rambled enough!

I’ve always been very conscious of being a burden, or having anyone worry about me, and so I’ve always played down hypos. 99% of the time, I’m actually fine, and totally capable of dealing with it alone and without anyone being in any way concerned about me. There are obviously some exceptions to that; at times I’ve had to completely stop what I’m doing and just sit and think about what I need to do to treat myself, and really monitor how I’m feeling, because I’ve been so hypo that I can’t really see or concentrate on much else. But, thankfully, most of the times I’ve had one of these, I’ve been at home and have managed to sort myself out pretty quickly.

Anyway, as always, thank you if you’ve managed to get this far. Hypos can be pretty scary for both diabetics, and non-diabetics who witness them or have to help with them, but I hope this helps to explain them a bit better from our point of view. My advice is, if the person with diabetes isn’t panicking, no one else needs to – we’re pros at this by now!