I’m sorry to put everyone through this, but I just need to rant. With my insulin pump, I’ve been able to live a fairly normal life.. I usually almost forget I even have diabetes until I have to push a button for insulin or check my blood sugar. Lately, I’ve been battling crazy blood sugars. I don’t know how much this means to any of you, but I upload my insulin pump into the computer weekly so my doctor can see my blood sugars and how much insulin (the hormone that LOWERS blood sugars) I’m giving myself with meals and to correct blood sugars. I guess that’s a good backround..
I’m a nursing student, taking 3-4 hour long classes at a time, doing 8-12 hour clinical shifts, and working 8-12 hour shifts on my hospital unit. I’m also trying my hardest to work out and lose weight. Lately, my blood sugars have been dropping a ton with class, during work, and when I work out. I’ve lowered my insulin levels during my workouts so I can get through them, but after I workout, for hours, the exercise has a lowering effect on my blood sugar, causing me to consume more sugar to raise it to a normal level, then eat a snack to keep it from dropping again. Basically when I work out, I eat back all the calories I burnt off because my blood sugars are lower for a day after I run or exercise. It’s frustrating because I feel like, why even work out if I’m just going to have to eat back everything and more that I burnt off at the gym? With class, I can deal with it, because it’s only a few hours, and I am not too bummed about having to eat a granola bar through it to get me through the day, although I’d rather only eat when I want to, not when my diabetes wants me to. Thirdly, with work. Ok, I did a 12 hour shift on Friday. My blood sugar was low at 10, so I ate glucose tabs (sugar to raise my blood sugar up), then a Kashi granola bar.. healthy enough.. Then at lunch, my blood sugar was low again, so I ate lunch and grabbed a candy bar (it was a bad day at work, and my sugar was low again, so I treated myself to M & Ms). 3-4ish, AGAIN my blood sugar was low.. ate more glucose tabs, another granola bar. 6pm, again (and by this point, I had a splitting headache from it being so low all day). I ate PB crackers. At this point, I’m not even counting calories, because I’m sure I ate all my day’s worth and I hadn’t even eaten dinner yet. I was starving. Basically my point with work is.. I always overeat because I have to.
I’m just so upset and frustrated. I am sitting at a solid 140 pounds. I eat SO healthy. I RARELY eat out.. last Thursday was the first time in probably a month. I work out, and hard. Yet I can’t seem to lose, and lately it’s because of my diabetes. My doc is trying to set my insulin settings on my pump, but with my crazy lifestyle lately, it’s difficult, because when I’m doing all these things, my blood sugars run low, but if I happen to not work out or go to work, they go high. I’m sorry, if I’m gonna weigh 140 pounds, I at least want to enjoy it. I wanna eat out or eat more or not work out as hard, because in my mind.. I should weigh 130 at least. One of my friends never works out, eats out every other day and weighs 10 pounds more than me… that’s it! I should be losing weight.. I count calories and don’t even have junk food in my apartment. I eat nothing but healthy foods, yet with my diabetes, I can’t lose anything. I only gain. It’s so.. defeating.
If you’ve actually read through all of this, I apologize for putting you through it.. I just needed to rant, to talk about it, because lately I’ve been really upset/sad about it. I’ve worked hard and have gotten nowhere because of my diabetes.. I just needed to talk.
A little rant about my diabetes! I ate about 1290 cals yesterday after a hard workout that day.. well.. I’m going to bed and my blood sugar drops to 50. I dunno if any of you have to deal with hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) but it really really sucks. You get ravenous. My self control is GONE when it happens. So I ate glucose, then a piece of pb bread, hand full of cereal, 4-5 mini quaker rice cakes.. I probably bumped my calories up to 1500-1600 by the time I went to bed.. BOO. granted, I probably needed them if my blood sugar was gonna be that low, but tonight I’m gonna eat a snack and skip insulin to prevent it from happening again.
I didn’t get a workout in today. I was in clinical from 8-4:30, meaning I got up at 6, and didn’t get home until 5:15 pm. It was a long day. I came home exhausted and just wanted to sleep. I didn’t though, I studied some instead. I will say, I ate pretty healthy today, at about 1200 calories (unless my blood sugar drops too low again for the THIRD night in a row! Ughh). So not bad. My roommates are going for a 3 mile run tonight at 11, but they are only really doing it so they could eat ice cream from mcdonalds today. Haha, they’re crazy :) anyways, I’ll probably be on tumblr a bit more, but then bed time! Gotta get that sleep, have class 9-4 tomorrow.. eek! <3 nursing school! lol
Finished today with a tablespoon of PB and a bag of 100 cal popcorn. I was going to eat a bowl of go lean, but then realized I ate 3 doses of Glucose tablets for my blood sugar throughout the day (boo diabetes!!). My blood sugar went low 3 times! Each time I eat 3 glucose tabs to bring it up, and each tab is 15 calories (equivalent of a teaspoon of sugar each), so multiply that by 9 and… yeah. hit my calorie quota for the day. Anyways, gotta get to bed.. psych clinicals in the AM! Wakin’ up at 6 am.
Finished today with a tablespoon of PB and a bag of 100 cal popcorn. I was going to eat a bowl of go lean, but then realized I ate 3 doses of Glucose tablets for my blood sugar throughout the day (boo diabetes!!). My blood sugar went low 3 times! Each time I eat 3 glucose tabs to bring it up, and each tab is 15 calories (equivalent of a teaspoon of sugar each), so multiply that by 9 and… yeah. hit my calorie quota for the day. Anyways, gotta get to bed.. psych clinicals in the AM! Wakin’ up at 6 am.
