Search This Blog

Monday 27 October 2014

Having diabetes is so often about what we have done wrong, what we need to work harder at. When we go to our Endo, educator or otherwise, they don't spend a huge deal of time concentrating on the parts that we're getting right. They're trying to fix what's wrong.

When things are going well with my diabetes, it becomes a background nuisance instead of an in-your-face temper tantrum, so I don't really think about it. I often forget the self high-five. The only time I ever really think to congratulate myself is when the oh-so-wonderful-must-be-magic 5.5 appears on my meter. Then its stop whatever I'm doing and happy dance it out.

Last weekend, my diabetes put on its 'Mr. Nice Guy' mask. It wasn't a fluke. I have been trying really, really hard lately. I'm going to take the time to tell myself: "Well done Ash, well done".

I woke up and went for a walk in the ridiculous Brisbane heat both days this weekend. First thing in the morning. It was good for my BGLs. (N.B. - exercise gives amazing BGLs all day. Exercise more).

The rest of the weekend was just a bunch of self-high-fives and some fist bumps with my fiance as somehow we managed to get diabetes to do what we wanted it to do.







It made what was a great weekend even better. You know you're doing something right when you can go to somewhere called 'Eat Street Markets' (read: gigantic street-food markets) eat a calzone, a potato spiral, a honeycomb milkshake and a cronut and end up on a 5.8. Just for reference: Cronuts quite clearly do not cause diabetes, as might have been stated by some very silly cafe a few months ago. 5.8. Non-diabetic range.







Getting it right just gives me so much more confidence to live my life as I want to. The difference between feeling controlled and uncontrolled for me can very much impact on what I feel comfortable doing. I had always wanted to go to one of those colour festivals, and there have been a few that I have almost signed up for, and with everything going so well, I finally got to go to one. I got covered in colour, and diabetes behaved itself.

Which was a massive relief because despite the Springflare fesival being a celebration as part of the G20 happening here in Brisbane this month, there was obviously no budget allocation for first aid. Like none, none. I had more medical equipment on me than the 1st aid tent. There were about 2 young volunteers working the tent with limited supplies consisting of tissues, rubber gloves and bottled (not even saline) water. I found all this out because I had to wander up there to get a BGL check done - thankfully I had my own supplies because they had none - and needed them to clean off a finger so I could actually find real estate to test on.

Fair warning for any Diabetics wanting to do a colour festival or run - pack alcohol swabs so you can clean a finger off. And bring some little zip lock baggies for your diabetes supplies too - I remembered one for my pump but forgot about my BGL checking supplies, and ended up with a pink lancing device.

It was so awesome to be able to enjoy my weekend without stressing that diabetes was doing things it shouldn't. I hope I have more of them.










No comments:

Post a Comment