Soooooooo, a big part of being diabetic is getting into good
habits and performing procedures repetitively. Hopefully with good practice,
(if you're a diabetic) you're a diabetic that changes the lancet whenever you
test you're blood sugars, change the needles whenever you inject insulin, and
rotate the sites where you inject your insulin on a regular basis. Sadly I'm
not one of those diabetics. Whether its because I'm lazy, or whether I just
don't care, its something I should change. The evidence is already clear to
professionals as well as to most people with the diabetes (type 1) that this is
good, or apparently, standard practice. Without changing the needle/lancet on
your finger-pricker you'll just end up with more painful blood tests. Unless
you're into that stuff, which is fine by me, no judgement here, love it, keep
going, you're great, although its a little strange. The needle gets
progressively blunt the more you use it, making the test more painful and
almost scarring. My fingers are consistently looking like someone has peppered
them. Now I do love some freshly ground black pepper, but I like it on my pasta
and more than that, I prefer the taste rather than the look. In addition, could
I have some salt with that? Thanks. If you're offering, I wouldn't refuse some
delicious sea salt with that ground pepper. So, ahm, what was I talking about? Something about needles?
Yeah! Flippin fingers freak me out! Well not really, I'm quite used to it now.
That's not even mentioning my injection sites. I think I've mentioned before,
lipohypertrophy, where you can inject too many times in the same area,
generating hard lumps of fat in that region. I've had some light ones before,
and I think the best practice would be to leave injection sites from that area
completely and to talk to a doctor. Although I believe that they'd mention
recommend just leaving that region too. For that reason its important to feel
yourself up. Get to know your body, every nuk and cranny, every crack and fanny
(Bum). From my experience, they can get a bit uncomfortable and painful too,
the lumps not the self examinations (although that can get a little too
comfortable). It's something quite easily avoidable which is pretty
hypocritical from me, considering my bad habits, but that's always the way with
self-reflection.
These aren't the only bad habits.
Something a bit more serious that can happen more frequently than I would care for, is the forgetting of my long-term insulin injection. Now that I split this dose into two and have a 12 hour gap, I inject at 9AM and 9PM. These timings seem
pretty reasonable, except when I want to sleep in on a weekend or I'm
travelling in the morning. More often than I'd like, I genuinely forget to
administer my evening dose, despite having an alarm for both injections. The
alarm is there for occasions where I'm busy and need a reminder (which isn't that often actually), but when I
anticipate the alarm it feels like a normal morning alarm and I endlessly
snooze my medication. This, more seriously, results in the elevation of my
blood sugars in the morning. I say more seriously, because who knows how long
my have been so high and who knows what damage this has done to my body,
particularly my kidneys and muscles. Honestly, the realisation that my sugars
have been so high all night fills me with dread, and doesn't give me a healthy
start for the day. On a positive note, its something to improve, and I don't
know about you, although you are probably me (aka the single reader) but my sugar
testing is a competition for me which gives a positive feeling
when I remain within the recommended ranges. I'm quite competitive with myself
and although I don't have any serious mental illnesses, the trash talk can get
quite personal (as you can imagine when you know literally everything about the
person you're 'trashing').
Please let me know if you're bad at this stuff too!
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