Diabetes pet peeves

As a diabetic, I have some pet peeves. High blood sugar, low blood sugar, unexplained blood sugar swings -- all of these are familiar to people like me who have diabetes.

One of my biggest diabetes peeves is having to eat when I don't feel like it. This most often happens at night. I'm prone to hypoglycemia in the wee hours of the morning, most often between 5:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. So I try not to go to bed at night with a blood sugar below about 10 mmol/l (that's 180 mg/dl for the Americans.)

Last night at bedtime, my blood sugar was 6.2 mmol/l (about 112 mg/dl.) This meant that I had to eat something. But I wasn't hungry! I don't know if this happens to other people; for non-diabetics, I imagine that if you're not hungry, you just don't eat -- right? I don't always have that option.

I compromised and instead of eating, I drank a cup of fairly high-sugar hot chocolate. I hoped the chocolate would raise my blood sugar and the milk I used to make the hot chocolate would help keep my blood sugar steady throughout the night. When I woke up just before 7:00 this morning, my blood sugar was 3.4 mmol/l (about 62 mg.dl), which is just a touch on the low side. This also meant I had to get up half an hour earlier than I would normally, because my normal getting-up time on workdays is 7:30 a.m.

This brings me to another pet peeve. When you have diabetes, you can't sleep in! Doesn't matter if it's a weekend or a holiday; the diabetes doesn't take a day off. For me, I can't sleep late because my blood sugar tends to dip lower the later in the morning it gets if I don't eat breakfast. For other people, they get what's called "dawn phenomenon," which is when the liver releases glycogen (stored-up sugar) in the morning and causes the blood sugar to go up. I understand that insulin pumps might be able to help with this, because they can be pre-programmed to deliver insulin in certain amounts on a certain schedule. Unfortunately, an insulin pump is outside of my financial abilities at the moment.

For any other diabetic people reading this: what are your diabetes pet peeves?