Writing Resources: Those Pesky Little Things Called Blood Sugars

Welcome back to another part of my writing resources series. I’m sorry this one took a little longer to come out. I’ve had so much to post lately that this was the only time I could sneak it in. Never fear though, there will be two other writing resources posts this month to make up for that!

Today I’m continuing with the Diabetes theme, but my other two posts this month will be about something else. So I’m talking about blood sugars, which I briefly touched on in my last post.

‘Blood sugars’ refers to the level of sugar in your blood. These are incredibly important because knowing these levels allows us to know how much insulin we need and how much we need to eat.

We learn the levels through finger pricking (there are other methods, but this is the easiest). On that little machine I mentioned last time, a number will come up. The range of numbers depends on the machine, mine goes from 1.5 to 25.0 anything below that is labelled as ‘LO’ and anything above as ‘HI’—those are not fun to see.

Different doctors will tell you they want different levels. In my experience, they usually want these levels between about 4 and 8. Anything below a 4 is considered hypoglycaemia, or low blood sugar. This is probably what most non-diabetics are aware of. This is when the jellybeans and the full-sugar drinks come out.

Hypoglycaemia can be extremely dangerous. Everyone gets different symptoms and is affected differently. I know some people get no symptoms at all, I’m the opposite though. Some of the symptoms I get are shaky hands, headaches, muddled thoughts, overly emotional, rise in body temperature, lethargy and loss of focus. Basically, I tend to stare at walls a lot and not really understand what’s going on.

Anything above about 12 is considered hyperglycaemia, which is high blood sugar. This is the worst thing in the world, or at least it is for me. Like with hypos, I get headaches, muddled thoughts, overly emotional, rise in body temperature, lethargy and loss of focus but I also get very, very grumpy and sick.

Yep, the symptoms are pretty much exactly the same. Hypoglycaemia is easily treated, you have some glucose of some kind and a carb and then you should feel back to normal within about half an hour. Here’s the fun thing about hyperglycaemia—there’s nothing you can do. You can drink water and keep up your insulin, but you can still feel like crap for days.

If your sugars are too high, you develop ketones in your blood. Ketones are the diabetics worst enemy. These things are nearly impossible to get rid of. They’re the ones that get you admitted to hospital with a drip in your arm, having saline pumped into your body. (I’m not bitter about this, though).

How I feel walking into the emergency room.

Maintaining blood sugars is hard. In my opinion, it’s the hardest part of having diabetes. If you ever plan on writing a diabetic character, this stuff is incredibly important because this is our pretty much hourly reminder that we’re different, that we have this stupid disease. It’s just another thing to remind us that we aren’t like our friends, and that sucks.

Writing Resources: Insulin and Other Diabetic Stuff

Hello there, gorgeous people!

If you clicked on this post then you’re probably either a) a writer or b) one of my friends. Either way, I’m glad you clicked on it. Today, in part two of my Writing Resources series/project/thing, I’ll be talking about the nitty gritty of Type One Diabetes.

Firstly, if you have no idea what this is or who I am, click here to read the introduction post I did. Secondly, check out the first part where I talked about things non-Diabetics shouldn’t say to Diabetics. Now, let’s get started.

I’m talking mainly about the more medical side today. I’m going to try and keep everything in the most basic of terms, but if there’s anything you don’t understand please feel free to leave me a comment or e-mail me. Also, I mentioned this in the first post, but this is just my experiences—every one has different symptoms and effects and opinions and preferences so please just remember that.

The first and most important thing…Insulin. This stuff saves lives, literally—it’s the only reason I’m still alive. For those of you who might not know, insulin is created in your pancreas and is pumped through your body to keep your blood sugar at a reasonable level. Those of us who are diagnosed with Diabetes have a pancreas that decided to stop producing insulin for no reason, because of that we need to inject insulin.

There are a few different ways we can do this. There’s the typical syringe method, though I’ve never met a Diabetic who has willingly done this as it means measuring up your own doses. Secondly, there’s this invention called an ‘Insulin pump’—it’s basically this little machine that is attached to your body (usually stomach or legs) that administers insulin. I use the third method, insulin pens. This is basically a ‘pen’ that has (usually) about 3mL of insulin in it. You attach a little needle to one end, turn a dial on the other (depending on the amount o what to inject) and there you go. Each person has their own preference, I’ve only ever used the pens but I like them and they suit me, and my lifestyle.

Secondly, we have blood glucose metres/blood sugar metres/monitors/many other things. These are the ‘finger pricks’ that many non-Diabetics have told me that they are terrified of. They aren’t the worse things in existence, really. So these are little (or big) machines that tell us the amount of glucose in our bodies, which then tells us how much insulin we’ll need. Basically, we put these little strips into the machine, prick our fingers and squeeze out enough blood until the machine makes (usually) a (very loud) noise.

Here’s a fun fact. Despite the fact I’ve tried this many times, you can’t just guess what your bloods (little slang term) will be. Attempting to do this is something that will make your care team very angry with you. Doing these tests suck because sometimes you end up doing them up to six or eight times a day. I have these little red dots on the sides of my fingers from testing so much and I’ve seen other people whose fingers have gotten infected. No, these tests don’t actually hurt that much but it is a daily reminder that you are different to your friend, which sometimes, sucks more than the disease itself.

I’m going to do yet another post just on blood sugar levels—what’s a good level, what’s not, how certain levels make you feel and all that. I feel like this one is getting a bit longer and I don’t want to bombard you all with too much.

I hope this post helped you somehow. Let me know if there’s another topic you’d like me to discuss or find other resources about. Thank you all for stopping by!

*Bonus content: Googling 'blood sugars' all turns out to be a fun time.

Writing Resources: What Not To Say to a Diabetic

Welcome to part one of my new Writing Resources project. If you’re not entirely sure as to what this is about, I’ve linked the original post here so you can learn a little more about the project and about me.

Part one is going to be focusing on Diabetes. In particular, Type One Diabetes. I’ve been Diabetic for almost six years now and obviously, it plays a big part in my daily life so I thought it was the best place to start. Because I’ve been dealing with this for six years, I have a lot to mention and so I’m thinking this is going to be broken into parts rather than just one ridiculously long post. I’ll come back and add the links to any other parts when they go up.

In this post, I just wanted to go through the basics—the general gist of Diabetes and how to write it into your novel/play/poem/screenplay/whatever. I mentioned this in the introduction, but I want to reiterate it here…this is not going to be scientific at all. These are my personal experiences, so this isn’t representative of all Diabetics in the world, this is just me.

Firstly, the biggest pet peeve in the world for any Type One Diabetic is dumb questions. Trust me, you get a lot of dumb questions/comments. The most typical one is the ‘But you’re not fat’, ‘Or you could just go on a diet’ or ‘Oh, my grandma has that’. And yes, maybe your grandma does have it but there are more than one type of Diabetes. Type One is the type that requires needles, constant monitoring and is in no way prevented by the amount of exercise you do or what you eat. If you’re pancreas decides it’s going to stop working on you, there is nothing you can do about it. It’s important that you understand that telling me that I’m ‘not fat’ is not going to help me or suddenly cure me.

Secondly, there is no cure. I will be injecting myself for the rest of my life, or until there is a cure. I know how harsh this might sound, but when you get diagnosed, you have quickly learn that you will be stuck with this forever. You know what? That’s okay. I’ve dealt with that already.

Which leads me to the next point—the ‘I don’t think I could do that’ comment. I get it, the idea of injecting yourself or pricking your fingers sounds terrifying. The thing is…we don’t really get a choice. Either we do these things, or we die. When those are your two options, you’ll learn to inject very quickly.

For those of you who aren’t aware, Diabetes relies heavily on the consumption of the right amount of carbs. Basically, I’m really happy that you can last all day on that smoothie you just had but I’m going to need food at least four times in the time it takes walk the city. Most importantly, don’t tell me what I can and cannot eat. You aren’t my endocrinologist (fancy word for a doctor that deals with diabetes and stuff) or my nutritionist, so please stop.

So this basically became a rant about things you shouldn’t say to a Diabetic. I hope it helped some of you, if not for a novel then just in general. In my next post, I’ll be talking more about the insulin/medication side of Diabetes and how that affects our daily lives but also, our mental and physical wellbeing.

Thank you all for sticking around!

Writing Resources: The Introduction

I’m one of those writers who loves research, but I’m also a little bit hesitant about writing diversely. Then I realised that there are aspects of my person that are diverse. In some ways, I’m pretty average — I’m a 19 year old female, I’m half-Australian half-British, and a student. In other ways, I’m a little bit different — I have anxiety, I lost my mum to cancer, I’ve been a Type One Diabetic for almost six years and (something I’ve never mentioned here) I have a disability that affects my ability to walk. This isn’t a pity party though, I’m mentioning all this because I want to start sharing my experience of these things with other people, other writers specifically, in the hope that it’ll help somebody.

I know things like this exist on the internet already, but sometimes I think that the websites you find for research can be very informative, even clinical. Sure, that’s great sometimes but I personally think the best kind of writing resources come from real people. The resources I’m going to be writing are going to be that kind — the real kind. I’m not going to tell you the scientific reasons behind Diabetes (not that I even know them), but I’ll tell you how difficult injecting yourself four times a day can be, about Diabetes burnout and other general sucky things.

For the things I’m not confident in I’ll be sharing resources I’ve found on my many travels of the internet. If there’s something you’d like to write about whether you’d prefer to post on your own blog or guest post for us, just shoot me an email and we’ll work something out. Similarly, if there’s something in particular you’d like to see then leave a comment and I’ll do my best to find something to help you out.