For the most part, diabetes is just a big source of inconvenience. Then, there are days like today, wherein diabetes is actually a problem. I've been fighting a cold since the weekend, which means that my blood sugar will inexplicably climb no matter what I do or how much insulin I deliver. Hence, the picture to the left, representing my morning fasting number. Not good.

Not only is this a problem in terms of managing my blood sugar, it is a problem in terms of managing my day. I still have to go to the gym and the office, help the kids with their schoolwork and do all the other assorted, banal tasks of Monday morning...

...but now, I will have to do them in a fit of diabetic rage. That's right. If you have diabetes, or if you live with another person who has diabetes, you are familiar with the circumstance:

I will innocuously check my blood sugar, realize I am high, check three more times just be sure that I am trending up and not down, retaliate with a dose of insulin to try and counter the unexplained jump in blood sugar, and pay for it an hour or two later when I bottom out. That will probably happen when I am in the car. So I will be driving down the highway, trying to steer with my elbows while juggling lancet, strip and meter. This usually happens when it is not sufficiently light out, by the way. All the while, I will be cussing like a sailor and slamming stuff around and flipping random people the bird because they dared to honk at my car as it is careening into the oncoming traffic as I try to locate the DEX 4 in my glovebox.

By day's end, I will probably have gone through about 30 test strips. Most of those will have been used in a panic, as I try to figure out if I am up or down. The rest will be the strips I drop in the car or on my bike or while trying to test and multi-task in some other capacity. I will not, however, have gone through a single lancet because, as any diabetic knows, those are only changed on a leap year or when the old lancet actually begins to show signs of rusting (whichever comes first). That assumes you need a lancet at all. I can usually just pinch my finger and re-open an earlier wound...and it might hurt less than the three year old lancet I have on hand.

The rest of my day will be spent in a creepy fog, wherein I try to stay awake at my desk with my chin propped on my left hand as I try not to drool.

Just one of those days.