I usually do not let anything hold me back. But I have to admit, sometimes I get so exhausted managing chronic health problems. I mean, literally. It seriously interferes with my sleep sometimes.
Last night my blood sugar decided to drop low for six to seven hours straight. My Dexcom alarmed every 30 minutes for the entire night. I got up about as often to eat some glucose tablets. Eventually I decided to just suspend my pump for two hours and, once I saw that I was rising, shut my CGM off.
On top of that, I was hot before going to bed so opened my window. Even though I have an air purifier running right next to my bed and antihistamine in my system, the open window (my allergies are telling me it’s start of pollen season here) was enough to make my allergies really bad. So my eyes felt extremely irritated and watered profusely for hours and I couldn’t breathe well until I eventually got up and closed the window.
Finally, I slept at 5:30 AM.
But when I finally slept, I had an unpleasant dream about getting cancer and dying. So that wasn’t all that restful…
I was supposed to get up at 6:00 AM. Instead, I slept until 7:30 AM and got a cab to work.
I sometimes feel like I’m literally moving through the day in a fog, and I think a lot of it is because of stuff like this…
Anyone have any tips or strategies they use for not being so sleep-deprived?!
@Jen, I absolutely hate reading about your night I really hope that some T1Ds rather than parents of CWDs will contribute to your thread here.
@Thomas had some really good suggestions for me a couple of months ago. He has not been around for a few days, so I will mention them. My interpretation of his ideas is mine only
Essentially, he adds sleep time to the set of criteria that he needs to optimize each night. On that basis, he adjusts his high alarm to a higher level if that is what will give him more sleep, rides a higher BG if needed, and sets an alarm twice a night to make adjustments as needed.
I have come to use his technique as well when I am really tired (I am generally the night alarm person in our household). If the evening is challenging and I don’t think i can make it easily through a tough night, I adjust my son’s range alarms from 75-120 to 70-140, or 65-160, or whatever I feel is necessary, then, if I go to bed at midnight, set an alarm for 2:30 and an alarm for 5:00am to have a look at things. Then before going to bed, I ride him up higher than usual, using whatever tools I need. Often, if sugar is not enough, I will suspend him for 30 minutes then lower his basal by 20% for 1.5 hours or some such thing in order to do so. Then he will run higher than I’d like that night.
When he goes on a sleepover, to preserve his sleep, we aim for 120 instead of aiming for 100, and ask him to up his high alarm to 150 or 160. This is rather nominal, because most of the time he won’t wake up anyway right now…
That sounds like a rough night!! Sounds like the cab to work was a good idea on this day.
I wish I had more helpful tips. I will say that suspending your pump was an awesome idea. If I have a stubborn low, at some point, I’ll just over-correct quite a bit to get my blood sugar up. I’m a zombie the next day if I spend too long below a certain point. I’d be better off getting a high alarm later and correcting for that. At least that way, by the time I wake up in the morning I’m probably in the right range even if the night was a roller coaster.
Consistent stubborn lows or highs indicate that my basal is off, so I’d need to adjust that. It sounds like your basal varies quite a bit depending on hormones, so this may be more difficult to manage for you.
Setting wider cgm boundaries for the night is a really good idea. At some point, sleep is more important than if you’re running a flat line.
I’m so sorry! What a drag! EH doesn’t love the low alarms at night either and follows some of what @Michel says was suggested to him. Correct, run a little high, change high and low settings, attempt to sleep. We had a month where we didn’t sleep through one night without alarms and it was terrible. I thought EH was going to crack up.
I’ll also add, we find it helpful to add in extra lead time to the bedtime routine (MDI took a while when he did that at night, and we often swap sites for the pump at night for some reason). So, if we want to sleep for 8 hours, we try to get in to bed 9 hours before we wake up. It never works (whoops, did you take out the trash? The dog?) so we get there a little late and it balances out. EH also advocates napping if possible.
This doesn’t address how to be amazing when you’re expected to be functioning and you’re totally sleep deprived, though. Maybe be extra extra kind to yourself?
Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions. I think sometimes setting a higher goal than I might like at night might be a good idea if I haven’t had a good night’s sleep recently.
In the case of the lows the other night, it continued on through the next day and the next night and today… I’m now swinging a bit between high and low trying to re-set my basals and ratios to what my body wants. So far I’ve dropped basal about 8 units and doubled all my ratios. We’ll see what happens tonight.
I really hope that some T1Ds rather than parents of CWDs will contribute to your thread here.
