Just Perfect

This morning I woke up with a Blood Glucose Level of 20 mmol (360 for our US readers), this was despite increasing my overnight insulin rates in my pump yesterday morning due to continually having to take extra insulin during the night. I thought today I would wake with the perfect blood glucose level. I woke and checked at 3 am and surprise surprise my levels had risen since going to bed. So took some extra insulin, back to sleep. Yet woke at 20 mmol…..Why, I wondered?

Just Perfect.

Today is a big day. My youngest child starts Kindy. He is my baby and this is a big deal. He is sweet and shy and does not like a lot of noise and people in his face. Kindy can be all of those things. Today I want to be focused on him as I start my day. I then have 4 meetings all in a row. I have a new oven arriving among this day, which requires masterful negotiation with the delivery driver’s to allow me to have them leave it on the driveway and not be home for 17 hours in case they happen to arrive.

Today I feel like total crap.

Why?

I figure must be coming down with something, it’s that time of the month, my site needs changing. So did that and then decided perhaps to check my adjustment to my overnight insulin rates from yesterday. Oh dear. Somehow instead of a 1 unit of insulin rate from midnight until 6 am, it had slipped a 12.30 am time slot in with ZERO insulin rate. So, from 12.30 am until 6 am I had ZERO insulin. Right.

Just Perfect.

Waking up with a blood glucose level of 4 – 8 mmol always makes me have an extra spring in my step. Not only do you feel physically better, but mentally and emotionally. It means I do not have to wonder why I am high and work out how to deal with it before even starting the day. It means I do not have to wait to eat breakfast. It means I can feel positive about my diabetes even if it does not stay that way all day (which inevitably it won’t!).

Is 4-8 somehow the magic number at which life becomes “perfect”?  Does a blood glucose reading have that much impact on my daily experience? Can it make a perfect moment less than perfect?

So I got to thinking about the meaning of perfect and how we throw it around. How we use it in sarcastic ways when things go wrong, as if what has happened is the opposite of perfect and thus perfect is defined.

But what is perfect?

Is it waking up to a Blood Glucose of 4 mmol? Or is it waking up to a still morning with sunlight creeping over a mountain and knowing you have an entire day to do whatever you want to do? Is it cuddling your child and smelling the beautiful scent of freshly washed baby hair? Is it cooking up a storm and serving the best meal ever? Is it finding the outfit you wanted to wear to next weeks party? All of these things still on the background of perhaps waking like today, with a less than perfect Blood Glucose Level?

Perfect is used in so many ways, so many contexts and is very subjective. Yet we all seem to measure ourselves, our health, our moments, our lives, against the idea of perfect.

I don’t have a perfect pancreas. It is faulty. I don’t wake up every day with a Blood Glucose of 4 mmol (in fact this is rare). I don’t have a perfect body. There are other bits of it that don’t work all that well. But I do consider myself to have perfect days, perfect moments and certainly a perfect life. I love and am loved. I get up each day inspired and interested in what I am spending my day doing. I get to have all sorts of experiences, some I enjoy, others, like this morning, I don’t enjoy so much. But all of these moments are part of my life. And you know what?

That’s just perfect.

Helen