Perception Versus Reality

I wake up to treat a low. I have five glucose tabs, wait until my BG is back up, then fall back asleep.

I’m low again thirty minutes later. I go downstairs and exercise great restraint by eating just one bowl of Lucky Charms (that’s hard to do even when I’m not low…). I pass the time by reading some blog posts, and once my BG is back up, I go back to bed.

An hour later, I’m up again. Low. Again.

In a fit of frustration, I eat way more than I need to treat this low.

If I would have caved into the urges to eat the house down on the first low, I would be sleeping.

My perception told me I was not being rewarded with calm and steady blood sugars from treating my lows sensibly. Just the opposite, in fact. I perceived that I was being run through the ringer that night and that I should have just over-treated in the first place.

The reality is that my basal rates need tweaking, as do most of my other pump settings. I should have also taken into account the basketball from that afternoon and made some adjustments.  When everything is working right (pardoning those occasional diabetes-goes-crazy times), a handful of glucose tabs should do the trick.

It’s all too easy to get lured into the trap of negative thinking when it’s 3:00 AM and you’ve been up treating lows three different times. But negative thinking usually leads me into negative behavior, and negative habits, like over-treating all of my lows.

I’m glad that I didn’t let myself fall into that trap.

At least that night.