Have you ever had one of those days where everything seems to go wrong? Well, for me, today was one of those days.
First, I woke up late. I hate getting up late, so my day didn’t start out on a good note. Test blood sugars – fine, in the 80s – fix breakfast. Remember that I needed to weigh my clementines and figure out how many carbs are likely to be in there so I could properly dose, but forgot a calculator, so it’s back to the bedroom, dig out the calculator, and then get back to breakfast. Check e-mail, check FB, get a shower and get ready for a meeting at 1:00. Write a quick post here on Tu about Bret Michaels and the Celebrity Apprentice (good chance he will win the contest with monies going to the ADA’s camps!).
As I’m writing the post, I’m not quite feeling right, but I’m in a hurry, so I figure nerves, adrenaline, etc. Nope. I test and what would you know: I miscalculated breakfast and am at a lovely 59. Perhaps it wasn’t a problem with me, maybe it’s the Bactrim I’m still on for the infection I had last week. Maybe it’s that clementines don’t have as many carbs in them as oranges. It could have been any one of a thousand things, but I need to go to my meeting. Since I’m not driving (which is a good thing considering how low I was), I feel OK to hop in the car and pick up a sub before the meeting. Get there, and guess what? The meeting was cancelled because the e-mail I could have sworn I sent never got through. I finish eating, talk a little more, and head out. My cell phone is a touch phone, so I can’t see the dial pad when I go out the door. I try calling for a ride, since my meeting was over in 35 minutes, but no answer. I call several numbers, but no one answers. The battery is dying and there are no pay phones nearby, so I decide to hoof it to a convenience store where I’m fairly certain there is a pay phone. Bad part: I had to walk about 1/4 mile along a very busy street without a sidewalk and in front of a sound barrier. I’ve watched people driving at that spot, and have seen people drive up that shoulder, not watching for people in the street, so I decide to not risk it; better to go up a block and come down another street. Reasonable, right?
HA! NOT! Not only did the streets I walked have no sidewalks, but they go uphill, have sharp curves, and best of all, they have extremely narrow shoulders (if at all). More importantly, none of the streets connect to the street I wanted to cross. So, walk, walk, walk I went. Further and further away from the street I wanted into an area I hadn’t been in, and I’m “navigating” (so to speak) by just my own internal sense of direction. When I hit one hill, my asthma kicks in, making it harder to breathe, and I think my bgs are dropping, since I’m starting to feel shaky, but there’s no place to sit down and test except on the wet, muddy ground. But I keep trucking forward.
At some point, my cell phone decided it didn’t like being in my jacket pocket and left for greener pastures. Literally. I don’t notice it until I’m nearly a mile down the road from the point it took the leap. Well, at least the battery was dead by that point. 
Unbeknownst to me, I’m not even half way through my walk at this point. I come to a road I know and thought I was going in the direction of a road that runs somewhat close to my house. You ever have that? Where you should have gone left when you went right? HERE!! No, I walked nearly two miles in the opposite direction, along another hilly road with narrow turns, no shoulder, and crazy drivers, though I don’t realize I’m going the wrong way until I am nearly at the end of the street and recognize some of the features of the area. ARGH! At least there are places there where I can find a phone to call for a ride. After I place the call and get something to drink, I finally find a place to sit down and check my blood sugars – 80, though it is likely to have been a rebound.
The only good news? I was able to find my cell phone, along the side of the road, near a very narrow shoulder and just after a curve where I had started to run to get beyond it before another car came. Thank goodness it hadn’t been picked up by someone else and that hadn’t rained harder or I would be out my phone.
Isn’t diabetes sort of like this? Full of missteps, miscalculations, unforeseen twists and turns, tough climbs, and unknown dangers? Perhaps the lesson for me in all of this is that the journey of diabetes is difficult, but with perseverance, you can get there.