Holiday Blood-Sugar Strategies

I’m about to start cheating again. I know this because I have misplaced my blood sugar monitor. It’s a new, small one, the kind that’s very easy to misplace. I have lost it because I know Thanksgiving is in a few weeks, and I need an excuse to not check my stats. Mainly, I wish to avoid harassment from well-intentioned family members.

When your wife and your mother are both nurses who specialize in endocrinology, you learn to make excuses. “Have you checked your blood sugar?” my mom asks every time I sit down at the dinner table. We eat with her frequently, and it’s become an old routine. “You know, you should check it before dinner.”

I remind her that I have had Type 2 diabetes for nearly 10 years and I know how to take care of myself by now. But before I’ve even finished my sentence, my wife joins the fray: “Ask him when his last doctor’s visit was.”

Sigh.

Your family can be a big help in managing chronic disease. But when you want to splurge, they can also be big pain. “Where’s the pie?” I ask at a recent family gathering. “Oh, it’s in the fridge, and you’ll love it,” Mom says. “I made it with Splenda just for you. It’s the bottom one, underneath the one I made for everyone else.”

I switch the pies. Let them eat Splenda, I think in my best Marie Antoinette inner voice. I’m going to eat the “real” one.

Later, as the sugary side effects—blurry eyes, drowsiness and a stomach ache—hit me, I search for my blood sugar monitor. I should have listened to my mother.

For diabetics, the holidays bring two major challenges: heaping amounts of savory and sweet foods, and the often intrusive concerns of family. In my family, where diabetes and hypertension abound, gatherings invariably invoke disease. The do-gooders (my mother and wife) and the self-righteous (my diabetic aunt, also a nurse) watch everyone like hawks and are unabashed in their comments.

My aunt announces medication times like a dinner bell. “I’ve got to go shoot up now,” she says. For those of us looking forward to the feast—not downward at our monitors—it’s annoying.

So that’s why, lately, I’ve worked with my loved ones to create a “nag-free” zone
on certain occasions. I have made it clear that being reminded of my disease takes the joy out of managing it. For their part, they have limited the temptation with diabetic-friendly options and have softened their nagging.

It’s working: With this arrangement, I’m able to truly enjoy these special events and still make smart decisions that I won’t regret later. This Thanksgiving, when I head for another helping of sweet potato pie, my wife will gently remind me that maybe I shouldn’t. She will make no mention of my diabetes or my blood sugar. Or she may say nothing at all, knowing she has secretly sweetened the pie—the same pie that everyone else is eating—with Splenda.

Vital Statistics
Managing diabetes is all about the numbers: blood sugar (normal approximately 70-120), caloric intake, calories burned, etc. I’m opening my medical files. Here are some of this week’s highlights.

Average Blood Sugar: 125
Peak: 310
Low: 70
Exercise session: 1 – walked 18 holes of golf
Guilty as charged: 1/2 pint Hagen Daaz Chocolate Peanut Butter in one
sitting.