Monday, October 21, 2013

Blood sugar mysteries,the good kind...

Back in September, I believe it was 9/9-9/10 or somewhere around there, I got spooked by my glucose levels. For about 36 hours my levels stayed incredibly stable! It was an almost un-diabetic experience. I kept looking at my CGM graph and felt fairly incredulous when I saw that I was still cruising steady at 80 mg/dl. I kept double-checking with my meter because I thought my sensor was going bad. It wasn't, I was literally teetering on the edge of perfect blood sugars no matter what I did. It wasn't just that I was running lower than usual, it was that I was neither rising nor dropping the normal amounts that you expect in the course of a day. I checked my data on the CGM and it showed that I was averaging 76 mg/dl and, (with the 24 hour high being 83 and low being 60) the standard deviation was something insane like 7.

Theories went through my head:
-was my infusion set in a vein, giving me super efficient insulin delivery?
-had my body figured out how to moderate my blood sugar (both high and low) just a tiny bit better?
-was I getting beta cell function back?

I still have no idea what was going on. On the third day or so my I think I sabotaged it and had dessert or something. It was almost like I wanted to make sure everything was still volatile. Party over!

Here's something I can say for sure, the more I aim for good control, I notice that my body becomes accustomed to that regularity, and it becomes easier to achieve it. When things are erratic, they seem to stay that way until I really settle things down with some simple living. It seems like there is some inertia to it, and it goes in cycles. Additionally, one of the major variables that seems to have the most consistent affect on my control is my infusion sites. When they are working well, it's a dream... when they lose their magic, it's obvious, and my blood sugars rise and react sluggishly to insulin.