DBlog Week Day 3 : A little less of that please

Today's Diabetes Blog Week topic is 'What is the one thing you could do better'. I suspect I'm not the only one to be thinking, 'What... just one?'. Ask us what we do brilliantly and many of us will struggle. Ask us where we need to improve and suddenly a hundred things are jostling for pole position.

For the last two or three years I've been working working working... Trying to improve things. Trying to fix things. Reading and learning and experimenting. I have rarely kept better records. I have never tried so hard in the attempt to keep my BGs in range for as much of the time as I possibly can. But there is an aspect of my diabetes that I have made no progress on whatsoever. None. And it really needs fixing.

I still get too grumpy about out of range results. Every time.

In the old days I would get frustrated with diabetes' randomness. I still like to rage at the randomness every now and then, for old time's sake, but these days I am more likely to blame myself. I suppose this is a genuine downside of putting extra effort into controlling my diabetes. Results that I would not have batted an eye at a few years back now cloud my mind with 'Why's' and What if's'.

I still beat myself up.

All the time.

'Gah! I got the carb count of that meal waaaay off'
or 'I *knew* the fat in that would slow down the carbs'
or 'Stupid, stupid, stupid. I massively overestimated the fat-based carb slowdown and now I'm high'
or 'Low after the gym. Again!'
or 'High after the gym... Shouldn't have had those extra carbs'

These days, with Artoo I have even more ammunition to beat myself up with.

'Not enough of a TBR...'
'Too much of a TBR...'
'Should have/should not have used that square wave/dual wave/duration/split/timing...' (delete as applicable)

Carb counting? Exercise adjustment? Basal profiles? Food choices? Snacking?

In reality it is all of these things and none of these things that need improvement. All the time. I am reminded of a brilliant post by Kim of textingmypancreas entitled 'What we aim for'. We put in all this work. We make all this effort in the hope that nothing will happen. Nothing, as Kim points out, is a pretty lousy reward.

Occasionally I have had brief moments where my meter seemed to have slipped into some parallel universe of BG nirvana and almost refused to give me an out of range result however much I misbehaved. My problem is that once I had glimpsed that I began to want it all the time. Even though I know deep down that is impossible. Diabetes is too fickle, too variable. The goalposts move too often and chasing down the new 'normal' takes time and involves 'out of range' information to base decisions on.

Jane is forever encouraging me to relax a bit and give myself a break. As with so many things in my life I really need to listen to her.