Confession: When people ask “How is your diabetes?” I
usually say, “Pretty good,” or “Fine,” but that isn’t entirely accurate. My average, or A1C, is higher than I’d like
it to be, but it’s not terrible. Ok, it's probably not even really all that good, either. I had better control
when I was rowing in college, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. Part of it is the difference of
routines. When I was rowing, we had a
practice/workout in the morning and assigned workouts to complete on our own
time later in the day, every day. Although there are workouts in and for circus classes, we have workouts for homework, my schedule is more sporadic. I also test my blood sugars less, partly
because my insurance only covers so many strips per month. Ok, mostly because of that reason. Therefore, I tend to set myself up
to keep my numbers on the high side when I know I won’t be testing often. In the long run, this is not a great thing,
but because lows can have immediate catastrophic effects, I’d rather be on the
upper end when I can’t continuously check my blood sugar.
Here’s another interesting difference between rowing and
circus-ing with diabetes: when I was rowing, it was easier to tell when my
blood sugar was getting low. With the
kind of work we’ve been doing here in circus school, there
are a lot more emotions that come up.
It’s much more difficult to figure out if I’m being emotional just
because I’m being emotional, or if it’s because my blood sugar is low. Apparently, I am a crier. I think I preferred when I could blame my tears on the low blood sugars.
