Been running high lately, and the emotional toll it takes is so frustrating. Is it impossible to believe that I can keep my BS in my target range (100-120) for a long period of time??? I even started CGM a few weeks ago and I don’t think it is helping for the better. I have a lot of stress in my life, but don’t we all? I guess I just need to call my CDE and figure out what needs to be adjusted. Still, I feel like every time I adjust I do well for a little while and then my BS creeps back up. I’m tired of having diabetes.
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I hear you about out of range BGs driving emotional turmoil. That happens and you’re not alone!
I don’t think your target range is reasonable even for a non-diabetic. Even a healthy glucose metabolism can range up to 140 mg/dl and regularly fall in the 60s each day. My target range is 65-140 mg/dl and I am able to stay in that range for a high percentage of time.
It takes a lot of sustained effort to discover a good basal routine, a good insulin to carb ratio, and an effective correction factor. I never received any good help from CDEs, endos, or nurses. The best advice I ever got was from reading books like Pumping Insulin by Walsh and Think Like a Pancreas by Scheiner. A more recent and book with a novel approach to controlling blood glucose was written by a T1D and endocrinologist, Stepehen Ponder. It’s titled Sugar Surfing.
But your education can’t stop there. Reading here about techniques that work for other diabetics was the single most effective thing that worked for me. Even that, however, will not create the breakthrough needed to start to solve the diabetes riddle. It takes curiosity, tenacity, and a willingness to do experiments. These experiments are necessary since your metabolism is not exactly like anyone else’s.
If you don’t have a photographic memory you should be willing to keep records and look at them to glean lessons. Not everyone likes to do this but I credit a lot of my success in regularly reviewing the voluminous data that my diabetes devices throw off each day.
Realize and accept that this is an incredibly tough game that we play. Flexibility is key. You have to accept that what worked yesterday may be likely to work today or it may not even be close! Observe, adjust, and move on but never give up.
You need to become an expert on your metabolism. While diabetes often seems like random chaos, there are patterns and ways to counteract wide ranging and volatile blood glucose. We’ll probably never kill the beast that is diabetes but we can certainly bring it to heal for a high percentage of the time.
You have all the tools you need. Rapid acting insulin, modern meters, CGMs, and insulin pumps make living with diabetes in this era the best time to be alive with diabetes. The key, however, is you! What you learn and practice will determine your success. Sorry if my tone is preachy; it took me 28 years to figure this thing out. My path took a serious turn for the better three years ago when I dedicated myself to learning everything I can about managing diabetes. I discovered this forum, adopted a low carb way of eating, and got religious about every day walking. It’s been a difference like night and day.
Good luck!
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I’m sorry you’re feeling disheartened, @MKSSS! If someone said to me “invent a condition that’s perfectly designed to make people feel frustrated and hopeless” I would most definitely respond “it already exists: diabetes”.
@Terry4 already shared some great wisdom with you, and frankly I’d LOVE for Terry to manage my diabetes for me because he is amazing at managing his own. Personally, I am not able to put that kind of time, focus and energy into managing diabetes without going completely mad, and I think there’s a balance to be struck between rigorous management and staying sane. People who love data have a leg up on this! That’s not everyone (and it’s not me)… So I have accepted this: every day I will do my very best, and the outcome either will or will not be what I wanted. That’s just how it is, and I’m going to love myself and my life regardless. If you’re like me, working to adopt a similar attitude might be helpful to you.
I have a favorite quote from Gary Scheiner (who wrote Think Like a Pancreas, which Terry recommended!), a CDE who I interview here on TuDiabetes every other month (recorded interviews here, if you want to watch). In one of our interviews a community member said “my blood sugar is so hard to control, and I can do the exact same thing twice and not get the same result. Why is that?” and Gary replied “I think it’s because you have diabetes”. I, personally, find that very comforting.
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To quote our dear friend @jrtpup - When things don’t work out they way we expect (and we go high or low), think about it for about 17 seconds; if you can’t figure it out, correct it and move on.
Ok - maybe not “quote” - but paraphrase, at least 
- but the advice is the same - Sometimes we can’t figure out why things happen. We just have to hope things work better next time.
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When the saying goes like this:
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”
And the definition of diabetes often is:
“Doing the same thing over and over again, and always getting different results.”
Then I would say being tired of diabetes is a natural reaction to unnatural circumstances. Posting here is a sane raction to this.
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That’s excellent!
Perfect! I nominate this as the official motto of this site 
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Thank you all for your kind words!
Raising children while diabetic. I just had a frustration. Trying to find a syringe while unpacking my car after being away from home for nine months. No, I haven’t found a syringe. The old one in the refrigerator didn’t have a needle but I was about to use it. My pump had gone dry and I’d already eaten and my BG was high and higher. I just wanted a shot and a bath and lower BG. But I had pump supplies and got insulin in me. I wish I was more organised and the house was not vermin infested and I could unpack neatly. You know, getting back to topic “feeling discouraged”, I struggle with things like knowing where a syringe is and I feel that that is a doable thing. There is something I may need relatively quickly when the need arises. And I have problems not knowing I need insulin but when I know I need some, okay I drop everything to get this simple 30 second task done and a half hour of focused searching goes by as the rest of my life goes by because I have to focus on finding a syringe…
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@MKSSS: To answer your question more properly, I would like to add that getting a CGM can add to the stress and in your case it could have done just that. You want to have tight control and for the first time in your life you actually see all your ups and downs that you might have missed before when you were just pricking your finger. That can be both stressful an tiring. If you add that for the time beeing you actually run high a lot, well, that´s tiring too.
I think it is possible for you to keep your BS in the range you want for a long period of time, not always, but sometimes. Ways to achieve this has @Terry4 allready suggested.
And don´t forget to be patient and take one thing at the time. This is not a quick fix. I think S. Ponders concept “Sugar Surfing” is a good way to approach living with diabetes. (Look it up if you´re not familiar). Your life is not constantly the same, so you just have to find a baseline and try to go with the flow and do adjustments according to that. Trying to avoid the high and lows before they happen, that´s the best use you can get out of your new CGM in my opinion.
And good luck,- we´ve all been there.
I just did. I have read ‘Think Like a Pancreas’ and ‘Pumping Insulin’ but had never heard of the book ‘Sugar Surfing’ It’s not on amazon.com yet, but I think I will order it when it is. Cool!
You can buy it from here:
Sugar Surfing.
If you are out of control, now is not the time to start a CGM. Are you eating a lot of carbs? White foods? If so, now is the time to rethink your diet.
He said so in his original post, @phoenixbound.
great. then there is no argument.
My blood sugars finally stabilized so I’ve felt better. I also bumped up one of my carb ratios. Amazing how much better I feel. Still, it’s frustrating. I think I would rock at being a type 2 diabetic. I go to the gym 5x a week and watch my diet. However, I’m bad at math and dropped statistics in college. Poor choice for a future T1.
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You observed, responded, endured and survived. Not fun but still successful! Congrats for learning and adjusting. We can’t do much more than that.
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