As I experience more in life (i.e. get older), it's more and more apparent that perfection is a myth and success comes to people who show up, who are active participants and who do their very best every single day.
If your single goal is perfection, you ARE going to stumble some day and drive yourself crazy for not meeting your own expectations.
Then that little evil voice in your head will tell you that you're not good enough and can't do it anyway, so why try?
I see this happen all the time and it is nowhere more apparent than with type 1 diabetes.
I do my best. I read as much as possible, I write, I post. Diabetes is on my mind 24/7.
But I'm not perfect.
For example, tonight: I ate a handful (or two) of cashews.
I know cashews are trouble, but I love them and I haven't had them in the house for so very long (for this reason). I ate the cashews in a rushed fashion while doing other things, then shuffled my daughters upstairs to get ready for bed...
AND I FORGOT TO BOLUS.
I knew better. Cashews are trouble. I should have bolused ahead of time OR I should have never touched those gloriously evil cashews in the first place.
But I didn't bolus AT ALL and I ate those cashews. And I'm not perfect.
Thankfully, I just gave an intramuscular shot (which is another useful technique in the low-carb toolkit discussed here) which will bring my glucose number down 100 points to the 83-100 mg/dl range within 90 minutes rather than 3-4 hours like a pump bolus or standard shot would do.
Now after drinking two huge glasses of water, I'm testing every 30 minutes to watch my blood glucose come down before I go to bed. Thankfully, these instances are rare, but they do happen. I'm just grateful that they don't happen every day anymore and I'm also relieved that I know what happened here.
The most frustrating times are when we don't know what might have raised our blood glucose levels. Could it be stress, lack of sleep, a new vitamin, a different food item, a drop of blood too small on the test strip, a less-effective insulin vial? Any and all of these things, plus more, as discussed here.
Sometimes we just don't know the cause (but believe me, there is always a cause). With low carb, thankfully, the guess-work is lessened and surprises are rare.
Chalk it up as another learning experience and keep going. No stress, no negative self-talk, no anger, bitterness or hatred. It's done. Learn from it and move on.
Please join me in making a promise to ourselves:
“I promise to show up and do the very best I can every day.
I promise not to get down on myself if I make a mistake, but get right back up, dust myself off and keep going.
I’m not perfect, but I’m going to work hard
and do the very best I can ”
Perfection is a myth. We just do the best we can. Every day.
"The Great Cashew Incident of 2015" was yet another learning experience. I was down to a BG of 125 mg/dl by the time I went to bed. I woke up to test two hours later and was at 73 mg/dl (no treatment needed), then had a waking BG of 79 mg/dl.
It was a smooth landing right on target.
