The First 2 Weeks

For the first week or two after being diagnosed, things were pretty surreal. It was tough to figure out when and where to test my blood sugars and inject myself, since I still was not very comfortable doing either in front of people. From Monday (D-day) to Thursday, I only took short acting insulin before meals, and I only took a correction dose - nothing to account for how much food I ate. (I also took and still take long acting insulin once a day to account for all the internal functions that can raise blood sugar throughout the day) For those few days my bg was running mostly in the 200-300s. I felt better, but the change was not very drastic. During hockey I was feeling a ton better. I felt like I could skate forever, and my whole mindset changed. Before that week I felt like everything was going against me, and now I was finally making some real progress. I met with a diabetes educator on Thursday who gave me a lot more (true) information about diabetes, carb counting, insulin, injections, blood sugars, lows, highs, etc. At this meeting, we decided that I should begin to take a dose of short acting insulin to account for food as well as blood sugar level before eating.

So Friday, November 5, I started the new regimen and immediately saw results. My bg levels were in the 100s for the entire day. My hockey coach (and I agreed with this decision...) was not confident that my bg was quite under control yet. So I was scratched for the first time in my collegiate career for our first home game of the season. I experienced another 'low' of 88 during the game (it might have been 80, I remember that there was at least one 8 in there and that it wasn't actually a low for a normal person). When the low came on, I realized that it was probably good that I wasn't playing on day one of adjusting insulin for carb intake. We won the game, but it was much different to be in the stands and watch the team play. It wasn't where I wanted to be, and I told myself that night that I wanted to do everything in my power to be on the ice for every game from then on. I also learned how 5-10 of our teammates feel during every game because we can only dress 20 players and have almost 30 on the roster. Every time I glide around or feel myself getting lazy when I'm playing, I think of how it feels to be in the stands and about how much those guys would give to be on the ice representing our school. As if I needed any extra motivation, this experience gave me that much more.

On Saturday I got a phone call, "How are you feeling?" "I'm good." "Ok, you're in..." YES! So many thoughts raced through my head... How much food should I bring? Do I need juice? How many carbs are in gatorade? How is a bus ride going to affect me? What about nerves? (The Diabetes educator told me that) I should be between 150-250 before skating.. What if I'm not? It's not ok to take insulin before playing, right? Then I thought, screw it, I'll prepare normally and see how it goes...

I did everything normally. I was in the low 100s before our off ice warmup so I ate a banana. I was also slightly low before the on ice warmup, so I drank a capri sun. Before the first period? Exactly 150! I was so excited that I couldn't stand it. Perfect for my first game back! I felt pretty good for the entire game. And I scored! What a comeback! I felt that my energy got low towards the end, but my blood sugar was not - actually it was slightly high - it got up above 260 by the end of the game.. I guess I ate too much to correct those readings around 100 before hand - oops. After the game I bolused for our post-game pizza on the bus. For some reason, though, I got pretty low (legitimately low this time) even though I had actually eaten more carbs than I planned for. Why could this be? (Now I know that after hockey, bg tends to fall pretty quickly and insulin sensitivity is high. Also, pizza is digested more slowly than a lot of other carb sources, so the insulin may hit before the carbs do.)

Following the directions of every person who had given me advice that week, I did not participate in the celebratory festivities with my teammates. That sucked, because it is always fun to go out after a sweep, but hey, I had diabetes now, so drinking was totally off limits... Oh well, there are bigger tragedies in life than not being able to drink.

The next week was a lot of the same. Actually, the hockey part was the same - Have a good bg upon waking, eat a little before practice, and have a high bg afterward. Hmm, hockey makes my bg go up. I thought everyone said that exercise would make it fall? That's weird. What was different this week is that my mother was in town. Coincidentally she had planned a trip to visit and watch our games that weekend. I was so happy to have her there and be able to talk about what was going on. Surprisingly though, I didn't find much to talk about. I had done tons of research on the internet, and had learned a lot from the people I had met the previous week. I also had spoken to her and my father over the phone a couple times since being diagnosed, and everything was going pretty well. So we talked mostly about normal stuff. How's home? work? school? yada yada.. Of course, at meal times I would ask, "hey, how many grams of carbs are in (insert carb-containing food here)?" and she usually wouldn't know the answer. Whoa, this is my mom, she has fed me for almost a quarter century, and she doesn't know about this (common food item)? I have to figure all this out by myself? Thank God for smart phones, because at least I can do a quick search on Calorie King for baked potatoes while sitting at the table!

We had another home-away series that weekend. During the game on Friday, I was struggling much more than I had the week before. My bg was in the upper 200s and even in the 300s (I check between periods). I told an assistant coach that it was high, and I ended up sitting for most of the third period. The next day, after going to breakfast with my mom, I was in my car when I got another phone call from my coach. "Hey, it seems like you don't quite have things under control yet, and I'd like to give some other guys a chance. You won't be in the lineup tonight." I think this was the first time I cried in a couple years. Just broke down. I had been working so hard to manage everything in stride, had been successful until the day before, AND my mom had flown across the country to watch me play. "Well this sucks." After a few minutes, I called my coach and asked if I could warmup with the team and see how my bg was after warmups, and we could decide based on that. I prepared the same way. After the bus ride I was a little high, so against every recommendation I had received, I took some insulin! What an outlaw! Are the D police going to find me and deliver a super-turbo low so that I never ever do something this STUPID again?? Nope. I figured I might go low during the team stretch, but I didn't. I also figured maybe I would go low during warmups, but I felt great. When I checked before the first period, I was right around 140. This is awesome! I spoke to my coach, who told me, "Hey I'm going with someone else tonight, just like I told you before." Well, my impression was that he would decide after hearing what my bg was, but it was obvious that his intention was never to do that. So I sat in the stands and watched my team (win another game!) with my mom and the other scratches (two of whom lived in the town in which we were playing, so it's unfortunate that they did not dress either). I decided not to eat anything and check my bg after every period to make sure that the insulin was the right idea. It was great for the whole game. Thus, I decided that since hockey usually made my bg rise, I would combat it with insulin. I was not going to let that high blood sugar situation happen again.