Don't you love it when you're doing everything a great diabetic should be doing?

 

You're checking your blood sugars when you wake up in the morning, before bed, and before every meal -- maybe even an hour afterward, too. You're taking your insulin on time and counting all your carbs and avoiding French fries and ice cream and pizza. And you're even going to the gym every morning and taking the stairs when you've gotta get to the third floor.

 

And then-SWOOOOSH, FLOP, DROP! -- you've fallen off the Diabetes Wagon.

 

You slide back into a few of your old habits. French fries. Checking your blood sugar when you get around to it (‘cause, ya know, we're good at guessing our blood sugars by now, right?) You're taking your insulin a half hour after dinner and you change your infusion site every four days instead of three because you still have so much insulin left in there....

 

Now, we've all got many different reasons for what helps us fall of the wagon, and I think many of them stem from two basic issues:

 

Stress: When I'm stressed out by school, or work, or relationships, or family, my diabetes can be the one to suffer. When I'm stressing about getting out of bed on time to make it to yoga on time so I can make it to the library with enough time to write a paper and get to class, you can bet a I tend to cut a few corners by not checking my blood sugar in the morning.

 

Maybe your daughter is getting married or your son is failing three classes. Maybe your husband is traveling a lot for work and the new puppy refuses to pee anywhere but the living room carpet. Maybe you're studying for the MCATs or you just got a promotion at work (congrats)...but with it came an extra two hours of work every day.

 

Whatever the stressor is, we might tend to compensate by making diabetes a little less consuming.

 

Exhaustion: We've already agreed upon the fact that diabetes is an intensive disease to care for and requires a lot of attention. So maybe you're just plain tired of it? Maybe, for a few weeks (or longer?), you find yourself not making your blood sugars a priority because you simply just want to do as little as possible to get by for a while. Junk food starts appearing in the cupboards again, and Chinese Take-Out becomes a tolerable choice for dinner. And you know, your blood sugars never come out the way you really want them to, so why bother at all?

 

 

SO...HOW DO WE GET BACK ON THE WAGON?

 

One of my biggest motivations is my endocrinologist. I quite simply just want to make her happy! I want to see the nurse's eyebrows rise in delight when she checks my blood pressure. I want to see the proud look on my doctor's face when my A1C comes back under 7.5 and the appointment ends with her saying something like, "Great. Just keep doing what you're doing."

 

However, that's not always enough.