I haven’t seen over 200 in a long time. The spaghetti did me in.
It’s not the low so much as the high. The 220 mg/dl at 4 am. I don’t eat much pasta and when I do I usually eat half a portion to keep my carbs lower. But someone else picked the restaurant and I feared as soon as I heard the name, “The Spaghetti House.” Sure enough, the menu consisted only of 7 different spaghetti and ravioli dishes.
Did he know I have diabetes? Yes. So does his sister. But we can say his knowledge only goes so far. There were no other restaurants open to change venue, so I decided to take a ‘diabetes vacation.’ I ate with abandon, almost the entire plate of spaghetti and mussels and one bruschetta.
As you can also see around midnight my blood sugar was bottoming out. So I ate a bit of fruit to raise it. Oh, Lordie. I can only guess the pasta, doused by me in olive oil was giving me a slower than slow rise due to the fat.
The moral of the story: it’s always a new day. Some days you clinch it, some you don’t. But let’s all take a breath, admit to the complexity of having to be a nuerobiologist, dietitian, mathematician, sociologist and archeologist to manage this condition. In my book, that’s flowing with the numbers, as they rise and fall, doing the best I can to keep guiding them back into range.
This also comes with the caveat that there’s no self-blame. I’m responsible for being familiar with my patterns and how various foods and activities influence my blood sugar. But that’s it, I make my best effort, most of the time, and adjust given the outcome. And the occasional diabetes vacation deserves to be on the playlist given all we handle.
