The Corner Booth

You never look forward to an experience welcoming the paramedics to help deal with a diabetes emergency. I'd gone over a decade since that was last needed. But a paramedic-summoning Low blood sugar reaction at the start of September reset my tally clock, and now I'm working from 0 since the last time my diabetes required the paramedics. It was a Friday morning. I had planned the day well in advance, as it was one day following my wife's birthday. I would drive her to work, come home to do whatever work I needed before taking the dog to "camp" for the weekend, and then I'd go pick her up for a dinner reservation and drinks afterward. That was the plan. But I didn't sleep well overnight, and some blood sugar glucoastering messed up my normal sleep schedule. I ended up with only about 2 hours of sleep, and chose to instead stay awake and take care of some overdue work I hadn't finished earlier. With the coffee pot fully brewed, I plunked away at my keyboa...

I've been enjoying my alcohol drinks a bit too much during the past several years. This has not gotten to a point where I've developed a problem. But it's just been too much, which has led to a number of health-related effects: weight gain, less-stable blood sugars, and probably just a stresser on my kidneys overall. Now granted, with the weight, alcohol alone hasn't been the issue. I've also enjoyed snacking. Working from home for so long has allowed this to happen in the middle of the day while working, as well as in the later evening hours when just relaxing and watching TV or hanging out at home. However, my reality for a good amount of time has been to have multiple drinks per night — whether it's a beer, craft brew, or bourbon and Diet Coke. As the saying goes, moderation is key. And I haven't been moderating to the best of my ability. After experiencing a severe stomach flu in mid-January and being dry for a 2-week period, I'd lost the interest in...

Not too long ago, I came down with an unknown viral bug that knocked me off my game for a couple weeks. It wasn't immediately diagnosed, but turned out being a viral stomach flu that was probably complicated by COVID-19 from more than a month earlier. After 10 days of being unable to work and do much of anything, I turned a corner and started moving toward recovery. This all made me realize how much I appreciate (at times) the world of life with diabetes. As much as type 1 diabetes can seem the opposite of stable, it's also predictable at times in that instability. And that in itself, might very well be comfortable when compared to other health issues life throws at us. By that, I mean that even when your blood sugars are jumping High or diving Low without any rhyme or reason, there's a certain amount of familiarity that comes with it. If you're too High, take insulin. Maybe the injected insulin or pump boluses take too long because insulin isn't too quick-acting, s...