How’d your day start? Mine has been a blur of low blood sugar since the early hours. My head is in a fog, and I am confused at the insulin sensitivity that seems to have moved in and made itself at home. I am also slightly buzzy, (and more than a little bloated!), thanks to the 1750milliliters of juice I have consumed since just after 2am. That’s right: a litre and three quarters of pine-orange juice to keep my BGLs above ridiculously low levels and silence my Dex alarms.

It played out like this:

2.30am – After sleeping through 30 minutes of low alarms, I woke with a start and downed a whole juice box, not even thinking that I’d try for half and then see how I was going – because, really, I just wanted to get back to sleep. But with my alarms still screeching, my Dex still sitting below 3mmol/l and the obvious hypo fog settling it, I downed another box quickly. And, after 60 mins of low alarms, another box.

I spent 90 minutes or so desperately watching the Dex app on my iPhone, waiting for the trace to rise, (and wondering how the hell two adults with perfectly good hearing could sleep through the alarms!), all the while engaging in what this morning appears to be a most bizarre Twitter conversation with some UK friends. (Not sure what’s their excuse for the odd and slightly inappropriate exchange; their glucose levels were apparently fine.)

Eventually fell back asleep around 4.00am with three juice boxes spent on my bedside table and my Dex line sitting comfortably and arrow-less in the mid-fives.

7.00am – Morning alarm coincided with Dex screeching at me with an urgent low alarm, which had been going for about 15 minutes. More juice – this time just one box – before gingerly starting the day, keeping a very close eye on my CGM numbers, which refused to go above 4.7mmol/l. But at least they were staying steady and not dropping. Until…

8.50am – As the kidlet was loading herself into the car and I was speaking to my neighbour from two doors down on the street, another alarm. This time, the fall rate alarm showing a BG that was dropping quickly from 4mmol/l. Kidlet unloaded from my car into neighbours car for school run, neighbour shouting at me to stop talking and go get some sugar, me heading inside for another two juice boxes because one wasn’t cutting it.

Each juice box has 27.5 grams of carbs. I’ve had seven of them this morning. That’s a shedload of sugar and I feel nauseous, foggy and exhausted.

This is not the first time I’ve had a day like this. In fact, I’ve had a few.

And I have done the checklist for what it could be:

Lost weight? – Nope.

Weather warmed up? – No; it’s freezing!

Exercising more? – Don’t be ridiculous.

Other health issues? – No (except a head cold and that would not make me hypo).

CURED? – Well, maybe… although probably not.

There is no rhyme or reason to this at all. There is nothing I can point to change or fix. I just lower my basal rates, under-bolus and have stopped pre-bolusing for meals. I also am very cautious with correction boluses because most of the time, they are just not necessary. This is just a weird period of extreme insulin sensitivity. It’s happened before, lasted a month or so and then things went back to normal.

I expect that will be the same here too, although the complicating factor is that on Thursday I am heading to New Orleans, where the heat, conference hypo syndrome and the fun of travelling WILL be a factor in making me go low a lot.

I’ve made some changes to my low alarm thresholds so I am notified of impending lows sooner. I’ve made a couple of little tweaks to my basal rates. I’m making sure my phone is NEVER out of sight so the chance of a Dex signal loss is almost impossible. And I’ll just wait. Because sometimes that’s all there is to do.

A far too familiar sight at the moment.