Self-Defeating Behavior

Blackness surrounded me.

The clock on the nightstand next to my bed probably read something like 1 a.m., but I wouldn’t know – because my eyes were closed. At that hour, all I wanted to do was sleep. And I was almost there.

But a faint noise was keeping me awake, just enough to stop me from stepping over that line into sleep-land. Not a beeping, as I’ve sometimes heard overnight and during the day as a diabetes device alerted me to a High or Low blood sugar. No, this was a vibrating.

Reluctantly pulled back from the doorway where sleep would fully cover me like a blanket, I opened an eye groggily and looked around.

A sleeping wife next to me. The covers pulled over my body. A faint night-time glow from the window off to the side. I’m sure the Riley Dog was nestled on her blanket next to the bed, but I didn’t turn over to look.

Reaching down to my waistline where my insulin pump was secured, I pulled the small pager-sized device up to my open eye to have a look. The backlight provided what I needed to see the message displayed across the screen: “No Delivery.”

Annoyed and still not even close to being awake, I grunted at the device. You know, #likeyoudo in that half-asleep mindset when you’re not even close to being awake.

I’m sure a thought or two went through my mind about WHY that alert was occurring, about the underlying reason for it – bad infusion site, pump tubing kink, reservoir blockage, or just the Sleep Gods bribing the Diabetes Device Gods in order to screw with me.

I’d been unconnected from Dexcom for a day or so and hadn’t yet put in a new sensor, so there was really nothing else to alert me of a problem. This was the time to get up and do a blood test, to identify whether I might have been insulin-deprived for any significant length of time and whether something more than a few clicks of the pump button would be needed.

As sometimes happens, I didn’t listen to that sage internal voice..

I vaguely remember grumbling to myself and saying, “I’ll deal with you in the morning.” I might have sworn at my pump, too.

The decision was clear: simply put the pump on snooze and go back to sleep.

And sleep I did, for the rest of the night. Without batting an eyelid or being awakened by any more pump alarms.

Of course, just because I wasn’t awakened by any pump alarms, that DOESN’T mean they weren’t going off and trying to wake me up.

Yes, apparently they were. I just didn’t hear them.

And that’s why I woke up to pump beeping several hours later, telling me that there was a now a long history of No Delivery and that I was basically depleted of insulin most of the night. Doesn’t help that I’d gone to bed in the 300s, thanks to eating a fat-heavy earlier dinner that night.

A blood test confirmed how I felt: High Blood Glucose.

High as in: You’re higher than the kite Benjamin Franklin set sailing in search of lightening. Ketones, too.

It was a fun morning of bringing the sugars back down and getting the ketones out of my system. By mid-morning, I was back into the 300s and then by noon I was 265. Skipped lunch and got back down into the 100s by mid-afternoon.

Was it worth it? Did I choose the right path, going for those hours of sleep immediately rather than taking 15 minutes to investigate and remedy the pump problem? Probably not. That was the move of a lazy man who just wanted his sleep.

Ironically, my Daily Bible verse that day had been from Proverbs 10:4 and it specifically warned me about this – “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” Translation, as I applied it to this situation: “C’mon, Hoskins, don’t be a slacker. Do what you need to, even if it’s in the middle of the night. Or you’ll cause your own poverty in the diabetes world of in-range blood sugars. But if you wake up and be diligent in addressing that No Delivery alarm, you’ll be blessed with good morning numbers.”

My choice sealed the morning’s path.

I know better. Even in retrospect, I know what I should have done. But I didn’t. And, somehow – amazingly – I fully expect to make that same choice again before long. Not every time that alert or a similar one disrupts my sleep, of course. But I’d be willing to guarantee it happens again. Because that temptation to keep sleeping is a strong one for me.

Self-defeating behavior, it is. I guess that’s how I roll sometimes. Luckily, Dexcom will be back on board soon and will hopefully help me deviate from these sleepy-time decisions - even when I don't have the will-power to respond to a pump alarm and get out of bed. God, I hear you. Here's me, trying not to be a slacker.

Because aside from divine beliefs and all that, I just don't like having High blood sugars.