In The Dead of Night…

It’s 2.46am, and I am awake. I’d love to say I’ve just got in from a night of mid-week revelry, ready to regale/disappoint you with an inappropriate story or two, but I’m reforming and sadly that is far from the case. I have an early alarm tomorrow because I’m helping out on a great project across the other side of London. I was late home from work this evening, which was all good and had about half an hour to myself before I started packing for a weekend of gigs and going home. No biggie, in fact I’ve got a good few days coming up with great friends, but I’m tired because I couldn’t sleep due to worrying whether I’d packed everything. I couldn’t get up when my body woke me 10 minutes ago because in my sleepy/delirious haze, I forgot that I’d put myself through the torture we like to call ‘bootcamp’ yesterday, resulting in the temporary loss of the use of my body from the arse down (sorry, I think I’m supposed to call those ‘glutes’. Apparently I have them).

Mmm… appetising…

After rolling to the kitchen and no doubt waking my light-sleeper of a housemate (sorry love), I’m now choking down some semi-stale bread that got left behind after the jubilee. Like the soggy bunting outside, it’s looking very sorry for itself. Even with a smattering of value jam on the top. That’s right, I like to go all out on these occasions. The bread’s not even mine, but in my generally low-carb world it’s the first thing I could lay my hands on (sorry housemate #2. That’s both of you I’ve pissed off in the space of 30 seconds and neither of you are (were) even awake). And this sorry excuse for food is of course EXACTLY what I want growling in my stomach as I try and sleep the remaining 2.5 hours I have left until my alarm goes off. And I’m even more annoyed because said bootcamp and other such stodge-sacrificing efforts have now gone out of the window. I’m pretty certain white bread and jam were off the menu for Angelina while she was morphing into Lara Croft (What? Unrealistic you say?!) And even MORE upset because said efforts are the reason I needed less insulin than normal, so even though my blood glucose post-dinner was slightly high, I should have known it was going to drop overnight. So, what WHAT on earth possessed me to bolus and extra three units before bed? Someone? Anyone? No, I’m dumbfounded too. And here we are. At that glorious thing we call a hypo. Once again.

As far as can tell, the number one, ultimate, supremo reason to feel just a tad frustrated right now (she writes, gritting her teeth and trying not to pull her hair out) is that I’ve been here so many times before. In 16 years of this I still have not learnt. I know, I know, I’m only human, but 99% of the time, the SECOND I wake up and fall out of bed in a cold-sweat kinda confusion (nice), or am sat at my desk and feel my concentration start to lapse (discounting the times when I’m paying slightly more attention to my Twitter newsfeed than is acceptable during office hours), or have to leave the gym early because I’ve got that familiar wobbly feeling in my legs, breathlessness in my chest, and confusion about my general existence – although yes that happens on other occasions – I know EXACTLY why I’m going hypo. ‘Over-compensated for that yoghurt at lunch’, ‘over-corrected that high after dinner’, ‘didn’t reduce the dose enough for exercise’ etc etc. Nonetheless, here we are at 3.05am, alone, in the dark, feeling crap in the midst of hypo #450,340, with thousands more to come before the glory of Type 1 is done with me. I’ve just gagged my way through about half of my stale solution, which is quite enough thank you. And besides, aside from waking up to find random breadcrumbs in various orifices, this little midnight ‘feast’ is no doubt going to leave me feeling sick as a dog in the morning and will just about fully wipe out the Friday feeling I was so looking forward to.

I know I’m grumbling. And I know I’m normally full of the ‘worse things happen at sea’ outlook, and that is generally how I see this disease we’ve been lumbered with. Given the ailments that could have been bestowed upon me in the medical condition Lucky Dip, I think as a T1 who very much goes about her life like a ‘normal’ person, I got off pretty lightly. But sometimes, particularly at 3am when I all can hear is the wind howling against my less-than-flimsy window pane (I’m very aware that sounds like something out of a Catherine Cookson novel but I’m not exaggerating) and a mangy fox having sex down the street, it’s feels rather fantastic to have a good old winge. And I know there’s so many T1’s out there who get equally frustrated (I hope?!). So don’t leave me hanging, join me my pancreatically challenged comrades and WINGE. I dares ya. Winge with me… as soon as you wake up.

Good luck with me tomorrow colleagues. Apologies again, housemates. And thank you so, so much dear hypo. Until next time….