About Blood Sugar Trampoline

For me, living with diabetes feels like being on a trampoline, the Blood Sugar Trampoline: constantly bouncing up and down but having to control every “bounce” to be within two high and low limits. 

So what might seem like it’s effortless to someone who does not have diabetes is actually a never ending burden for someone with diabetes.It’s not liberating or energizing, as you might imagine bouncing on a trampoline might be. I was given targets: I can only bounce so high and so low - I now had to bounce between these imaginary lines.

If nothing ever happened to me in my life I might be able to achieve bouncing within my targets but well, we all know that 1) life always throws unexpected stuff at you and 2) what quality of life would that be? 

Blood Sugar Influencers from Within

So now not only am I bouncing on a blood sugar trampoline, “life” has decided to send in lots of disruptors to my bouncing: kind of like when the a party of children join you and each adorable rascal represents one of the 42 factors, YES, FORTY TWO factors, that influence blood sugar levels, from within your own body. Some of those are; Insulin, Food, Activity, Illness, Medication, All the hormones; adrenaline, cortisol, menstruation, growth, and so on. Check out the list here. A huge Thanks to Adam Brown from Diatribe for putting them together.

And just like children who have limited spatial awareness, they get underfoot, knocking you over, and they are unpredictable: I have no control over and have no way to measure a lot of these blood sugar influences. Now, it’s more difficult to stay within those targets but possible if I work even harder at it.

Blood Sugar Influencers from Outside

There are people standing guard around this Blood Sugar Trampoline because there is no protective net. Gasp! These people represent all the relationships in my life; my family, my extended family, my friends, my work, my social life, travelling, and other events.

They don’t realise it but they all have little white ping pong balls and they’re throwing them at me! Hard!

At this point, I hope that you can feel the intensity of this imagery, the exhaustion from all that bouncing and the relentlessness. Remember, I am on this Blood Sugar Trampoline for the rest of my life. I’ve already been on it for over 25 years. Some days, I just sit there and let it all happen. I’m too tired to do diabetes today. But then I remember all that I have to live for and that I want to keep going for 40 more! So I get up and start again.

Sustaining the bouncing is the hard part of diabetes for me. The things you see of diabetes, such as my blood sugar checks, taking my insulin, occasionally checking the graph on my insulin pump. They’re not that hard part of diabetes. But the daily slog, the relentless decision making and calculating of insulin, carbohydrate, physical activity, the anxiety around blood sugars dropping too low not that’s the hardest part.

Diabetes - The Complete Picture

I have presented you with a very visual idea of what living with diabetes feels like for me.

But in reality, diabetes is not visual - it’s invisible. All of this exhaustion and this relentlessness is all contained inside my head.

BUT, even though it’s difficult, challenging, relentless and exhausting. I’m still grateful for it. I’m alive and I’m doing everything I can to thrive with diabetes.