All the small things

As the title says there is more to life with diabetes than just checking your BG and taking insulin and whatever other types of medication you may be on. First there are the mental aspects of it which I don't want to go into at the moment. Here I want to talk about all the small things, the little innocuous things that to someone without diabetes would have no consequence but to folk like me they can become a little bit more sinister.
Needing to go for a wee. Well as innocent as it may sound this can mean one thing for a diabetic, that they have a high BG, generally over 10 mmol/l. This is caused by the kidneys dumping excess glucose into the urine when BG exceeds 10 mmol/l, this is called the renal threshold. So then, waking up in the middle of the night or in the small hours with a desperate urge to use the toilet usually results in a BG. Sometimes it comes back to be in the right range of numbers. Sometimes it comes back to be just over what I want to be so I correct. Sometimes it comes out as being far from where I want it to be. For insulin pumpers such as me this can mean a variety of things. Chief amongst these things is a cannula fail which is a right nasty bugger to deal with but somehow it's even worse at night when you've just woken up and it's the kind of time you're a little groggy from being woken up and you're in that twilight zone between fully functional awake and the fine state of slumber you were in previously. This makes everything that little bit harder. The resulting cannula change becomes more complex for what was once a relatively simple procedure. There are other reasons for waking up high in the small hours and one of them is being human. We can carb count to a very high degree of accuracy but sometimes it just doesn't work and you get it wrong. Simple but hugely irritating.
Being thirsty. Normal solution drink. If diabetic reach for testing kit, insert strip into meter, prick finger with finger stabber and apply blood then wait for the score. If you're lucky it comes back fine so you then go and grab a drink of your choice. If you're unlucky and the BG's come back high well, the reason you're thirsty is because of the renal threshold trying to wash glucose out of your body in the urine. Once again a usually small and innocent thing becoming somewhat more sinister.
Being tired. Yes. Another symptom of hyperglycaemia. If it's completely inexplicable after a restful night's sleep then it precipitates a blood test. Normally fatigue is a symptom of hyperglycaemia or sometimes it can be related to a hypo.
Shaky legs. It may well be that you've just been for a fine jog but when you've got up off the sofa if you're a bit of a slob at the moment like I am it can mean one thing only to me. A hypo and then comes the resulting blood test. Granted each diabetic has a variety of hypo symptoms that make it patently clear to that induvidual that they are hypo but they do follow broad guidelines.

That's the end of a somewhat disjointed blog post. I suppose what I wanted to get across is that any day to day thing which means nothing more than what it first appears to be to someone who doesn't have diabetes.