Listening to Old Music & Thoughts on Diabetes

This evening I’m just sitting here listening to a bunch of old music compilation videos on YouTube. I’m always surprised at the power of music and nostalgia. I was just sitting at my computer a while ago browsing Steemit, and a song I don’t really know or care for came on and I instantly started crying.

This happens to me from time to time, because I have weird hormonal issues due to my diabetes. With my body not being able to self regulate itself by producing natural insulin, I have to inject synthetic insulin and sometimes it’s too little or too much. It really is more of an art than a science, though at first I would have believed it was more science than art and would obsessively track chart and analyze my blood sugar. Now I just inject by using the intuition I’ve learned over the six plus years I’ve had this disease. Still it’s not perfect, but nothing is when it comes to diabetes...

For example, with the chocolate croissant pictured above (or pain au chocolat) I didn’t freak out or worry about how much carbs are in it or what my current blood sugar level was before I ate it. I just enjoyed it for what it was in the moment I was eating it and took some insulin later. With my job, I am quite active so that can keep my sugar down a bit which can cause problems if i take insulin the “scientific” way.

It’s the same with exercise, which I’m trying to ease back in to. Intentional exercise can be trickier for me in managing my sugar, because depending on the type of exercise (cardio vs resistance) intensity and frequency, it can majorly affect my blood sugar and cause a bit of a dangerous situation if I’m not careful.

Basically, blood sugar control is a lot more complicated than taking a reading and injecting a little (or a lot) of insulin. Food affects it obviously, but also physical activity, emotions, sleep, etc... It can get very exhausting at times... But for now I am very hopeful for some clinical trials being done that seem quite promising. Apparently there’s a tuberculosis vaccine that can cause the immune system to stop attacking the pancreas in type one diabetics. They’re working on finding out what an appropriate dose and frequency of dosing right now, and I can’t wait to see the results of that testing...

It can’t come soon enough.