Sunday 25 November 2012

Changes and Refresh

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Someone posted a question on Reddit recently that made me think. It was How do you make yourself care *about* your diabetes, not for it.

There was a few comments that were I like my eyesight/limbs/want to watch children grow up and etc. But when you're living in the here and now, Diabetes complications seem like such a far off thing. I've always "cared" about my Diabetes. I know it's this long term, chronic condition with the likelihood of complications if you have poor control. In all honesty, my way of dealing with it was to just take my insulin every day and test on an ad hoc basis. Over the last 6 months how I care for my diabetes has changed into this scientific guessing game. Carb counting, correction doses, balancing, exercising. It's exhausting. But I keep going. Because I know I can do this. 


This is one of the replies to the question, it really encapsulated how I feel - Not sure if you can read it but I'll put the majority of it here:

It boiled down to not feeling defeated if you screw up during the day. Like, if I checked my bloodsugar only twice throughout the day, I can't think, "Oh crap, I'm taking shitty care of myself so why bother at all?" Instead I try to think of it as a win. "I tested two more times than I did the day before! I'm working on it, so it's ok."
It's always a work in progress, so you have to take the view that anything you do is better than nothing. "My A1C is down .2 points! Great!" or "I tested 4 times today!" I know I should do better, but thinking in this way has made me feel less like I am always circling the drain. Instead, I am slowly clawing my way out of it. I hope that helps.

Sometimes you can't win with diabetes, it throws in curves ball blood sugars and whacky overnight lows. But you just have to keep trying.

I fell off the wagon a tiny bit with recording all my food and exercise (slash actually doing exercise) but tomorrow is a new week! I'm starting small but my goals for this week are:
- Producing 3 diet records for the Dietitian
- Exercising 3 times - I think this will be more of the walk variety but I have access to some lovely gardens so will make sure this includes some uphills! Ultimately I'd like to do some running but just starting small. 
- Some sort of strength/core training exercise twice.

It's all very manageable. Since I've been super busy lately I've had less of a routine, so I'm getting back into it. Changing it and just starting afresh! Writing it down helps keep it present in my mind and makes me actually want to complete some of my goals. 

Until next time!

Saturday 17 November 2012

A few crazy, hectic weeks

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Whenever I'm super busy I become really focused on one thing. Often this is to the detriment of my own health and sanity. I feel like I've been like that this last week. Last Friday I completed my Legal Professionals Course, otherwise known as Profs. It's the NZ equivalent of sitting the Bar exam for Lawyers. Basically it's a 5 month online course with two onsite modules. Last week I was completing the last module. It consisted of two exams, a 4 day workshop and performance assessments on the Friday. The whole thing was stressful and I was glad to be done! But I was seriously overworked. I'd had a couple of advocacy cases to deal with through my work, which meant I had to schedule meetings as well as completing the full time workshops. 

Also, I'm dealing with a lot emotionally, as my wonderful, amazing, precious boyfriend is leaving the country in a week. I feel like these past two weeks have been a complete and utter roller coaster. But last week instead of dealing with anything, I just focused on my profs course. Now that it's finished I feel like I have room to breathe again and writing all this down is a very healing and relaxing move for me. I'm supposed to be packing as I'm going away with the boyfriend for a couple of days before he leaves but instead I'm taking 10 minutes of me time. Just to sit, post a blog post, catch up on the mountains of blog posts from others that are filling up my google reader. My blood sugar levels have not been ideal, and I haven't been as focused on checking them as I should have been. Diabetes is a roller coaster in itself and although I have gone off course a little bit I'm still heading in the right direction. I may not have been checking 6 - 8 times a day but I have been managing about 3 or 4. My levels have been a bit higher but not outrageously. I think no matter what I did, management wise, my levels still would have been sitting higher than normal due to the stress.

I feel a little bit like I'm broken but I know that its the stress and emotions talking. I just need to take time, gather myself and get back on track. I'm really looking forward to a couple of days off and just relaxing. This is what life is all about. The stress, the crazy, the hectic. I usually love it. But what I need right now is to just relax. 

And that's what I plan to do. :)

S xx