I'm a Dismal Diabetic

Soooooooo, a big part of being diabetic is getting into good habits and performing procedures repetitively. Hopefully with good practice, (if you're a diabetic) you're a diabetic that changes the lancet whenever you test you're blood sugars, change the needles whenever you inject insulin, and rotate the sites where you inject your insulin on a regular basis. Sadly I'm not one of those diabetics. Whether its because I'm lazy, or whether I just don't care, its something I should change. The evidence is already clear to professionals as well as to most people with the diabetes (type 1) that this is good, or apparently, standard practice. Without changing the needle/lancet on your finger-pricker you'll just end up with more painful blood tests. Unless you're into that stuff, which is fine by me, no judgement here, love it, keep going, you're great, although its a little strange. The needle gets progressively blunt the more you use it, making the test more painful and almost scarring. My fingers are consistently looking like someone has peppered them. Now I do love some freshly ground black pepper, but I like it on my pasta and more than that, I prefer the taste rather than the look. In addition, could I have some salt with that? Thanks. If you're offering, I wouldn't refuse some delicious sea salt with that ground pepper. So, ahm, what was I talking about? Something about needles? Yeah! Flippin fingers freak me out! Well not really, I'm quite used to it now. That's not even mentioning my injection sites. I think I've mentioned before, lipohypertrophy, where you can inject too many times in the same area, generating hard lumps of fat in that region. I've had some light ones before, and I think the best practice would be to leave injection sites from that area completely and to talk to a doctor. Although I believe that they'd mention recommend just leaving that region too. For that reason its important to feel yourself up. Get to know your body, every nuk and cranny, every crack and fanny (Bum). From my experience, they can get a bit uncomfortable and painful too, the lumps not the self examinations (although that can get a little too comfortable). It's something quite easily avoidable which is pretty hypocritical from me, considering my bad habits, but that's always the way with self-reflection.  

These aren't the only bad habits. Something a bit more serious that can happen more frequently than I would care for, is the forgetting of my long-term insulin injection. Now that I split this dose into two and have a 12 hour gap, I inject at 9AM and 9PM. These timings seem pretty reasonable, except when I want to sleep in on a weekend or I'm travelling in the morning. More often than I'd like, I genuinely forget to administer my evening dose, despite having an alarm for both injections. The alarm is there for occasions where I'm busy and need a reminder (which isn't that often actually), but when I anticipate the alarm it feels like a normal morning alarm and I endlessly snooze my medication. This, more seriously, results in the elevation of my blood sugars in the morning. I say more seriously, because who knows how long my have been so high and who knows what damage this has done to my body, particularly my kidneys and muscles. Honestly, the realisation that my sugars have been so high all night fills me with dread, and doesn't give me a healthy start for the day. On a positive note, its something to improve, and I don't know about you, although you are probably me (aka the single reader) but my sugar testing is a competition for me which gives a positive feeling when I remain within the recommended ranges. I'm quite competitive with myself and although I don't have any serious mental illnesses, the trash talk can get quite personal (as you can imagine when you know literally everything about the person you're 'trashing').

Please let me know if you're bad at this stuff too!