Ok so I decided to get out of the house which I usually don't do to not feeling well. I met a friend up for lunch to watch some football. Had a few beers along with the lunch. To start off I didn't feel too bad but still not great. About 90 min after the lunch I started feeling a little low and depressed so I grabbed a 4 gram wafer. Waited about 10 min and noticed a little improvement. I figured I was correct just because I felt better. I then decided to have one more just to be safe and within seconds started feeling irritable. At that point I stopped, road it out in misery like I always do and set back for home. I get into the house and decide to check my glucose and its a whopping 96. I am just seriously loosing my mind. I really feel I need to have myself committed as this is just way too disturbing. My whole life is in shambles because I am always irritable, anxious, hungry, angry and quite frankly I don't want to get up anymore. My only peace is when I am sleeping. Even then the sugars can be disturbing but usually I sleep through it. I am just at a loss. To think at 96 I would be able to tell something is just not right. In general I find with the amount of lows I get now a 96 is even too high. I just don't know where to turn for help for this. I am just flat out miserable despite the fact that sugars overall aren't that terrible. I just can't imagine if my own pancreas would be working that any of these crazy feelings would be present. Something is just seriously wrong here.
I would have tested my BG to see how low I was before I would treat it most of the time. I sort of cheat with a CGM but, particularly given your issues, I would test first and treat later. I would probably have treated with more beer instead of a wafer too. Beer sounds much tastier than wafers.
Gary, you have posted how you feel numerous times and it certainly sounds like you are unhappy. But you have also received numerous responses over a long period of time, all of which state in some shape or form that it sounds like you have emotional issues (depression and anxiety) and that it would really help to see a therapist and possibly be prescribed some medication. But you continue to post the same feelings and ask "what should I do?". No, I do not believe you are feeling terrible because you are more sensitive than the rest of us and 96 makes you feel awful (wondering what a good blood sugar would be then). And no, I do not think you need to be committed. But yes, I do think you need help and do find it frustrating when you say the same thing over and over but don't listen to the responses. I realize you don't want to stay miserable, but I also realize you don't believe there can be a way out, or consider mental health issues such a stigma you refuse to accept you may have some. A huge number of people suffer from Depression or Anxiety in the U.S. And many of those people get help and then say, "why did I go so long feeling this bad when there was help out there". I rarely bring out my credentials, as we all have creds - both personal and professional. But perhaps it will help to do so when I say that I've worked with hundreds maybe thousands of people who have gotten help for Depression, and I teach Psychology as well. I'm hoping you keep posting in hope of an answer.
I know you love to make light of this ■■■■ and that's all well and good but I have a serious problem here. Though 96 is clearly in the normal fasting range I feel irritable and edgy. I've since taken a few units for diner coming up and noticed a little relief already as the sugar is dropping but still don't feel well. The whole thing makes no sense to me but what else could this be? Its only once in a while where I actually feel no BS fluctuations happening. I really don't no where to turn as my case seems so rare. I'm not even convinced a transplant would help me. When I express I feel horrible its no exaggeration. It's like getting Chemo treatment or something. Just so F*****G disturbing. My whole life is passing me by with no pleasure or happiness.
I am not ignoring the suggestions but the sugar issues are real and I have little hope that therapy and meds are going to fix that. I understand many people have depression and anxiety but they are not plagued with sugar sensitivity problems on top of that so its far more likely the meds would be effective for them. As I sit here typing this my sugar appears to have dropped off at least a couple of points and I am starting to feel better. That tells me that for me 96 is too high to feel well. I would consider that in itself a major problem if you have diabetes of course. Its a chemical issue that can't be fixed without my own pancreas doing what its supposed to do. I guess I have no choice but to try meds because this is just not good. I could somewhat accept the fact that I need to inject insulin to survive but there is no way around physical and emotional distress from the sugars.
I don't get the freaking out about 96. That's right where you are supposed to be. Maybe a shade low if you have insulin "on board" from the lunch/ beer. To me, that suggests that the BG problems are not actually real. Meters are not accurate enough to say that 96 is really a 96 anyway, it's more like a Heisenberg situation where your BG was somewhere in the neighborhood of 96. If you are that upset by a 96, the problem is in getting that upset about a 96, not in the biophysical responses to being @ 96. There aren't any because the rest of your "software" and "hardware" is designed to function at that level.
I am not making light of anything, Gary. I don't doubt you feel horrible. I just don't think it is from a bloodsugar of 96, or from a "rare sensitivity to blood sugar fluctuations". Your sentence, "My whole life is passing me by with no pleasure or happiness" is a classic description of Depression. If I were as desperate as you I would be willing to try anything, especially if so many people have made similar suggestions. Why not just go ahead and get a Mental Health Assessment and if they diagnose Depression give it an honest effort at therapy and medication. What have you got to lose? What's stopping you - the belief that it won't do any good and you have something rarer and more hopeless is also a key symptom of Depression.
"If you are that upset by a 96, the problem is in getting that upset about a 96, not in the biophysical responses to being @ 96." Excellent sentence, AR!
I could honestly care less where the sugar is but my mind and soul are different. It's very difficult to explain what I am feeling but I use words like irritable, distress, anxiety, pressure.... etc because I think what I experience is way out of the norm at least at near normal levels for people with diabetes. I can't imagine anyone without diabetes experiencing anything that I do. It's not like pain, a burn or a tooth ache that the majority of people can relate to. I am really just F******G loosing it. It's like I need to be sedated or committed.
As I said I am not upset at seeing the 96 but my body and mind say different. I know what its like to feel good and I am not experiencing that at that BS. Imagine if you could only tolerate temperature at 75 degrees and anything either below that or above that your body started breaking out in a severe rash and felt like your skin was burning. How would you live your life in peace? That's kind of the predicament I seem to be in. I can only assume its sugar related based on experience injecting and or eating when seeing where the levels are at and what gives me temporary relief. I really feel extremely helpless about this. My body is asking me to do something it should be doing on its own I am not qualified to do so.
Even if you were cured from diabetes (or never had it in the first place) your body would maintain your blood sugar at or near 96 a good portion of the time. That is a totally normal blood sugar. I don't really understand how you can feel terrible even when you are at a normal blood sugar and still think it's the blood sugar causing it ... If you feel terrible when high, when low, and when perfectly normal, then what blood sugar level DON'T you feel terrible at?
I agree with Zoe and others that it sounds like you have depression and/or anxiety. There is no shame in that. I would give treatment a try and, even if it doesn't fix things completely, it might help partially and can't possibly do any harm. I know asking for this type of help is never easy, but I would really encourage you to give it a try—in the future you might look back and be really thankful that you did!
Jen,
I really don't know what my sugar is when I feel fine generally because I don't test when I do and trust me its rare. What I can say is pretty much anything post 90 when there is no more insulin on board to lower I start feeling that pressure, irritability type thing kicking in and usually injecting insulin will start to relieve that. I thought I was good up to 100 but apparently not. Now on the other end my cutoff seems to be around 80 but I can tolerate the lows a little better. I am depressed because my life sucks in every aspect and I am on an emotional roller coaster from the diabetes so its a vicious cycle of no relief. I would never stay single if I weren't sick nor would I remain at dead end jobs. I feel like a drug addict with loving parents to keep a roof over my head and once that is gone I have nothing. It may get to a point where I plead for a transplant just to see if having natural insulin production can help me. I have doubts with that as well. Though a 96 may even be a tad high for a fasting sugar it makes no sense to me why I would feel anything but perfect at that level but I didn't. Strangely I may not have felt any worse at 200 then I did at 96.
I don't understand why you didn't test your BG before correcting. That's a recipe for disaster.
Gary, you said I really don't know what my sugar is when I feel fine generally because I don't test when I do and trust me its rare. . Then you said What I can say is pretty much anything post 90 when there is no more insulin on board to lower I start feeling that pressure, irritability type thing kicking in and usually injecting insulin will start to relieve that. I thought I was good up to 100 but apparently not. I can't reconcile those 2 statements.
Then you said I am depressed because my life sucks in every aspect. It seems to me that you might feel awful because you have diabetes, not because of the physiological effects of diabetes. Why not try out Zoe's excellent advice and see a therapist? Can you see the possibility that you feel crappy at a BG that is agreeable for your body because you think you do? Mind over matter is a funny thing sometimes.
I have no problem going to a therapist. In fact I did that program back in the late 90's when I had Ins. The problem now is I don't have Ins and would only seek out someone that knows diabetes inside and out. Plus I don't have much free time due to work. I know I am depressed in general but its funny as bad is my life is when I feel fine I get by in my own world. When the sugar levels wreak havoc I become emotionally unstable and keep dwelling on how bad everything is. To me its like pure torture and I get furious I have to live like this when I did nothing wrong. This disease robbed my life. Yeah I am alive but it's a horrible existence. It's extremely difficult for me to keep calm and just accept the raw deal I got. So much damage is already done that even a cure can't fix at this point. To much valuable time wasted. I am a very jealous envious person by nature which doesn't help. I know you guys care and are trying to help but like I said I feel really hopeless. By nature I usually fight back when something gets to me but I just can't win against diabetes. It has me by the balls so to speak.
I feel for you, and I admit I do not know you, but from reading your posts it seems to me you have pinned ALL your hopes and dreams on a cure that unfortunately MAY never come. I've been D for close to 28 years and I've never stopped living my life HOPING for a cure to make it all well again. Yes it is a crappy deal we've all been given, but we can't stop living, we have to make the most of every day we have. A cure may NEVER come, Im realistic enough to have accepted that fate a long time ago. I too think you could benefit greatly from seeking some help from a therapist or perhaps some antidepressant medication. I dont doubt for one second you are miserable, but I wonder if your misery is more a depression versus D.
For me , it is difficult to advise ...too, too far removed from " the problem " it seems ...I have been following Gary's postings for some time ...and never added any comments the main reason being : I am not trained ; don't know what to say .
But is this type of statement by you Gary , not saying like it is ...so why wait ???
I am really just F******G loosing it. It's like I need to be sedated or committed.
I just can't get around this statement, Gary - "I just can't imagine if my own pancreas would be working that any of these crazy feelings would be present. Something is just seriously wrong here."
I imagine even if your pancreas worked just fine, you would still be miserable and depressed. You are a very angry person, and you blame your disease for everything you feel. Even though diabetes and depression sometimes go hand in hand, it is possible to treat both. And diabetes is not a guarantee that one will become hopeless. I am sorry that you feel this way, and hope you will seek some help for it. You will never feel better if you won't take steps to manage these conditions.
The major problem I see here is that you want to blame your bg for everything that you feel, but you are not willing to take any control of it. I dance when my bg is 96! And I would never just drive home if I felt any kind of unstable. Diabetes does not have to be a horrible existance, and once you get over the anger (I really think you are incredibly angry), maybe you can start taking control of your life.
If you are that sensitive to blood sugar changes, a diabetes cure would not help you.
This presentation shows CGMS data for over 20 absolutely normal, non- diabetic people over several days, including
both test meals and daily life. The subjects had mean A1cs of 5.0, normal C-Peptide, glucose tolerance tests, etc.
http://www.diabetes-symposium.org/index.php?menu=view&chart=4&id=322
Daily glucose ranged from 55-160 in ABSOLUTELY NORMAL people.
http://www.diabetes-symposium.org/index.php?menu=view&chart=35&id=322
Mean post prandial numbers peaked in the 120s to 130s..., from fasting numbers near 80.
http://www.diabetes-symposium.org/index.php?menu=view&chart=25&id=322
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What is Normal Glucose? – Continuous Glucose Monitoring Data from Healthy Subjects
Christiansen, Prof. J. S., On the occasion of the Annual Meeting of the EASD, Copenhagen, 13-Sep-06
Gary, what bothers me is that perfectly normal people with perfectly normal pancreases are at 96 ALL the time, and NEVER have bad feelings that can be attributed to BGs. On the other hand, some of them DO have bad feelings that can be attributed to misbehaving brain chemicals. If you feel bad at 96, then you will NEVER feel good at any BG -- 96 is as normal as you can possibly get, and your bad feelings probably don't correlate with your BGS at all -- you're just attributing them to BGs without any hard evidence at all.
It seems very clear to me that you are attributing your bad feelings to just one thing when it seems pretty obvious that it's WAY more complicated than that. And that you are flatly refusing to consider the possibility of multiple causes -- you have already diagnosed yourself, and won't take any other answer.
Well, you are neither a physician, nor a psychiatrist nor a psychologist -- why won't you admit that they may know something YOU don't know? Since what you're doing ISN'T working, why do you refuse to give anything else a try? One of the proofs that medicine DOES work is that you don't have to believe in it for it to be effective (as opposed to placebo or woo, where you DO have to believe in it). So the only thing I can say to you is GIVE YOURSELF A CHANCE!!! Stop with the negative mumbo-jumbo denial, and get cracking! Only YOU can help yourself -- not one of the rest of us can do a thing!
Gary,
Why not walk into the nearest hospital that has a psych unit. Psych is a part of medicine, so you would have an opportunity to be treated for depression as well as get that A1c into a normal place and the testing routine where it ought to be. Sometimes we have to let others help us. And we all need to take the steps to stop zig-zags and start and keep to routines that work. When life gets in a shambles, we need others to treat us.
And, yes, I consider this a major problem. Best wishes. Put one foot in front of the other.