Not Always Perfect

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.