Finding the chase and cutting to it

I’m sitting watching the rain come to a stop on a cold March day in the UK. The sun is making an appearance and, for the time being, I am waiting for the miracle that is fiasp insulin to work its magic.

I’d had a good day yesterday with the insulin I’d programmed in a few months ago for this stage in my menstrual cycle, and the bolus decisions I’d made for the food I’d eaten all came to fruition. I was a little heavy handed for my evening bolux but on spotting that early still scored a respectable 99% time in range.

The night was even better, little variance over the period. I’d cleaned up the house and walked into town. The exertions meant I was a little low, but no biggy, I had emergency rations with me and treated appriotely. The low hid the fact that my cannula had stopped functioning about 10am in the morning. My blood sugar started soaring at 12:27 and by 12:57 it was obvious walking back home was not an option.

I’m lucky, I could afford to take a taxi back home, I stripped off my rain soaked outer clothing and less than 4 minutes later was admistering insulin through a newly inserted cannula. Of course, even an insulin analague takes time to lower blood glucose down from 3 hours worth of missed insulin doses, but 90 minutes later it is all looking good. I wait until we’re back down to 10mmol/l before working out how much I’ve potentially over treated and then compensate with the minimal amount of carbohydrates to ensure I won’t be hypo the rest of the afternoon.

I’m often told that as a “good diabetic”, a compliant diabetic, a diabetic who is “really well controlled” that I am not disabled. I do not incur costs related to my disability and I do not have anything “holding me back”. Technology is going to make my “burden less”.

Do not get me wrong, the fact I could see my blood sugar rise from 3.4 to 16 mmol/l in less than 45 minutes meant I knew what was happening, but given the cannula had failed, nothing was going to stop that happening.
I’m still disabled. I still have to wait for the subcutaneous insulin to do its thang and because this is an “unexpected event” this is not something I can leave to the hybrid loop to sort out. If it sees too much insulin on board, it will shut off the temporary correction I need to bed in the new cannula for a few hours and I cannot have it work out that is not a good thing.

So, please stop telling me it is going to be so much better because of the technology. I have a splitting headache caused by interrupted insulin infusion and a blood sugar 4.3 times higher than a none diabetic and it isn’t because “I’ve done the wrong thing”. My cannula should have been good until 9am tomorrow.

I’m still disabled, life is still not the same as it would be with type 1 diabetes.  I do incur monetary costs because of that disability.