High Anxiety

I want to write about my experiences with high blood sugars.  I've been very reluctant to take on this topic for two reasons:

1. I certainly recognize that many other diabetics have frequent experiences that are far, far more unpleasant than those I've had.  
2. At my current disease state, a high level of blood sugar is almost certainly the result of a poor food choice rather than a miscalculation, a circumstance out of my immediate control, or just diabetes being difficult.  So, the whole topic brings me back to that whole diabetes guilt thing. 

That all being said, I think it's an important topic for what I want to do with this blog.  It is part of my experience with the disease.

My highest blood sugar numbers that I've known about have been in the low 300s.  I'm quite certain that I had higher numbers than that before diagnosis, based on what I know now.  There have also been a few occasions when I might have been higher but was too chicken to test.

The highest I usually see is in the mid-200s.  And though it's very unreliable to gauge BG by how one feels, I've come to recognize symptoms that often accompany such readings for me. These include a feeling of edginess, (more) difficulty in concentration, and impaired emotional control. (That is, my mood can swing like a Cirque de Soleil act.)  I often feel anxious as well. This all does not exactly constitute suffering, but it still bites.

When I do have this experience, I find that exercise brings me pretty down pretty rapidly.  If I'm in a circumstance such that I can, I go outside and walk as hard as I can for twenty minutes or so.  I also find that regular exercise tends to minimize how high the reading gets after a meal and how rapidly it comes down afterward.

So I guess I should be exercising more, huh?