Diabetes is random sometimes

Today I am introducing my friend Trip Stoner (better known by the picture of her trusty puppy).  Trip and I met on TUDiabetes.net a few years ago and we hit it off immediately.  Trip is funny, kind and all the rest you woudl want in a friend.  I hope you will welcome Trip and her incredible story of

Random Spikes of Highs, Lows, and Butterfly Farts

One of my children had a favorite high school teacher who once was complaining about one of his students who tended to get up and move around the classroom. “Good Gracious” he said, “You are a lot like a fart in the wind. You just blow where you may.” Some days, I feel like my blood glucose levels are just like that.

Hidden diabetes

My name is Trip Stoner and I have had Type One Diabetes for over twenty-three years. Yes, I am a dyslexic Stoner, who shoots up NOT to get high. For most of my life I have hidden my diabetes..quite well too. Until a few years ago, I had close friends who had no idea I had diabetes. But my eyes have now been open. I discovered the Diabetic Online Community (DOC) by accident one day surfing the internet two years ago. More specifically, I discovered a jewel of a community called TuDiabetes. It is here I discovered my adventures with diabetes is perfectly normally. All of my adventures…the highs, the lows, the rants, the insurance fights, loathing the doctors appointments, dka due to illness, and even the dreaded adventure with diabetes burnout.

Yesterday, while chatting with a few online friends from the DOC, I had a random spike. I had eaten lunch two hours before this spike and I rose over 120 points in less than 20 minutes. As my mind raced in the question of why, and should I rage bolus for this, I ask my friends for their guess on the reason why. One simple reply summed it up:

“Butterfly Farts”

There it was. A most simple, elegant reason. OK, maybe elegant isn’t the word you would choose. But to me it was. Sometimes, as a person with diabetes, I have no control whatsoever over my glucose control. There are 22 factors that go into one’s level, and most of them you have no control over. Sometimes trying to figure out the why is as pointless as trying to harvest a butterfly fart. For that matter, even pondering if butterflies fart.

I held my temptation to bolus for the spike and decided to see where it would land. Of course, I got distracted and the next thing I knew my nightscout watch was buzzing with a plument. In twenty minutes I went from being in the mid 200s to leveling out on the high 90s. All within an hour. Who knows? Maybe a butterfly did flutter by and farted. It is as good as a guess as any. Now I wonder if I could get grant money to research the impact of butterflies farts and glucose levels.