What a Difference a Day Makes!

You know the old song "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes!" ? Well, with M.E., it certainly does, doesn't it?

My last post was talking about my new Insulin Pump and trying a little very gentle Pilates? Well, this is my day to go down to the local Nature Therapy Gardens for a gentle Pilates session. The one with the VERY gentle understanding instructor who has recovered from an M.E.-like illness? Since I started this last month I've managed to keep going each week, accompanied by my cousin. Not long, I know. Little goals, little successes (lots of recovery and mini-crashes, too, tbh!) Today I've had to text her to confess I'm just too poorly to walk down there, let alone do the session to any level at all.

What a difference a day makes. Today it was all I could do to get out of bed and dress myself, I was in so much pain, so weak and wobbly, glands swollen, head banging. Today I can hardly balance sitting down, let alone spreadeagled on an exercise mat! Not quite ready for a consistent performance in the Paralympics, yet, then!

My blood sugar was ticking along in the normal range with my pump doing its stuff most of the time this week. But like I said, it can't yet replace your pancreas completely! Or work miracles! Much as I'm fond of my little Humphrey Pump-hrey and his amazing 24/7 basal rates!

I was making a meal of blueberries, cottage cheese and pineapple last evening. Being one of those people who likes to do a bit of spontaneous juggling in the kitchen, I'd decided on the ingredients to hand, and the carbohydrates involved. I'd done the diabetic maths. Then half way through the process, having set my pump off to give me a multi-wave bolus gradually over 30 minutes, I suddenly decided to warm the blueberries up and add some gelatine I had in the back of the cupboard to make them into jelly.

No immediate problem, but I then realised I needed to cool them and wait a while before marrying them to the pineapple cottage cheese. So, inevitably, while concentrating on each part of this process, resting in between, getting brain-fog and having to check and redo things etc, I ended up very slightly hypo (low blood sugar) by the time I settled down to eat. That was soon corrected, but then comes the inevitable spike afterwards as my body later freaks out that "an error has occurred." My liver squirts out an inappropriate amount of glycogen to compensate (in spite of the fact I'd already dealt with that blip earlier).

As I'm already on a bad few days with M.E. symptoms, alternately feverish and shivering (had to snap myself out of putting the heating on yesterday - it's still August, for goodness' sake!), I'm now struggling to get my sugars back into range. Several correction boluses later, and now on an elevated TBR (temporary basal rate), I'm still in double figures. I'm starting to recognise this pattern after any inadvertent overdo!

It won't last. I'll be back to "normal" as soon as I possibly can. But the fact remains that in the uncertain world of autoimmune diseases like M.E. and Type 1 Diabetes, nothing can be taken for granted. There are no quick fixes or perfectly balanced equations. No matter what textbooks, quacks or know-it-alls will tell you! Anecdotal is just that. We're all our own quirky anecdotes! Nothing's guaranteed, just a lot of patient trial and error and learning your own limits and challenges, helps and solutions (oh - and some screaming and throwing things, if preferred!)

Today will mostly be a rest day. I have friends coming from a long distance to have lunch with me tomorrow, which I want to try and be at my best for, naturally, so we can all enjoy. Lunch will be out, no cooking or juggling. I need a clear head for a meeting at the weekend too.

Hope if you're reading this, you're being good to yourself. Not expecting too much or too little of yourself. Not beating yourself up about things you have no control over. Not thinking that frustrations today won't be useful learning experiences, or even a cause of laughs tomorrow! Not letting things lost keep you from looking forward to tomorrow, no matter how uncertain it seems through this end of the telescope!

What a difference a day makes! Shares can go up as well as down!