good choice.

A friend of mine once told me that it's important to trust the decisions you make. You assess the things you know at the time and then you pick a course of action. If new information arises that gives you pause to "change your mind" or the direction you are going in, then so be it. It's not that you got it wrong, he says, it's just that you now have more information to consider.

This has helped me a lot. Up until this conversation with my friend, I had always kind of beat myself up about "wrong" decisions I'd made, especially about diabetes. "I should have known this was going to happen", was a refrain I'd hear, subtly in the background of my struggles with keeping my bloodsugars even and in control.

So we come to yesterday. It was a beautiful, cool summer day and I was taking a walk around the garden. I'm a avid gardener and my garden is a source of great joy and peace to me. I love it. As I was meandering around I saw a weed here and pulled it. Some grass where it shouldn't be so I pulled it too. Soon I was on my knees digging, cleaning up, dead heading roses, all the things that gardeners do. One hour passed. And then another. It was so great to be outside, to strech my still recovering shoulders, to strech in general. Plus there was a ton of work to do as I looked closer, so I dove in with full force.

While my hands were full of weeds, a niggling thought kept pushing at the back of my mind, that I needed to pace myself and pay more attention to the amount of work I was doing. Countless afternoons of gardening have resulted in late night lows, hours after the work is done. I heard the warnings and I gently pushed them away, out of my mind for a while. And an hour would pass and they'd float back in and again, I'd push them away. Because at the moment it felt too good to stop. It felt so good to use my body and be in the garden, outside in the cool, fresh air.

And of course, I was up last night with a big low. I ate extra fat at dinner, with the hope that it would counteract all the exercise, a technique that had occasionally worked in the past. But it didn't and there I was, stumbling in the night to get milk, jamming 2 cookies in my mouth and then lying there, waiting for my mouth and tongue to stop being numb.

This morning I woke feeling tired and stupid and mad at myself. I should have made different decisions. I should have known better. And maybe that is so. And maybe I did have all the information and I still picked the wrong course. But with diabetes I never know for sure what the outcome will be. Generally I can predict it will do certain things, but not always. So did I really have "all the information"? Is it ever possible to have it all? And even if I did have it all, the bigger question is, was it the wrong course, regardless of the outcome? Would I have forgone the wonderful day I had yesterday, to avoid the low I had last night? Truthfully, probably not. And that's the rub with diabetes. It's not that you can't live with the consequences of all the choices you have to make. It's that with diabetes, small choices can have profound physical reactions. On some days that's bearable, on others, not so much.

So I'm left with my friends wise counsel and also something I've learned from many of Scott's comments to my blog, which is that I need to cut myself some slack. It's not some character flaw that I chose gardening "over" the possibility of a low in the night. I have diabetes which adds a slippery world of variables to a life full of desires, goals and choices. I assessed, I hoped, I may have even fooled myself about the situation. But I'm not a bad person because of it. That part, the recriminations and judgements, I can let go of. In the end, you weigh the options and then you choose. I chose gardening yesterday and I'm trying a new response, which is "good for me".

Comments

[Scott K. Johnson]

Thank you for yet another wonderful post!

I got a lot from the part about trusting the decisions you make. I think that is very powerful. You make a decision based on the information you have at the time, and go with it. Maybe adjusting your course here and there based on new "navigational way points" of additional information as it comes in.

Being able to submerse yourself in your garden (which look beautiful by the way) was a thing of beauty in itself.

And you did your best to deal with that, by altering your supper a bit - but it's just so hard to know how much to alter! That activity is so hard to "quantify" - to put a number on it. It's nearly impossible. All my basketball is trial and error every time. And it's always different!

So, we enjoy what we enjoy, and do the best we can with our diabetes before, during and after. And try not to beat ourselves up when we don't nail it exactly. :-)

Thanks again, and take care!

[Kevin]

Do not beat yourself up.

Not letting diabetes slow you down or deprive you of things you love in life is *the* goal of living with diabetes. To that end, you were marvelous.

You're on a learning curve. We're always on a learning curve, which is completely frustrating after 20+ years of doing this, but it is none-the-less true. You thought about the effects of gardening all day, you took action based on previous experiences, and well, unfortunately, it didn't work out as best as planned. That's okay. Not all was wasted. You (we) have tools in your (our) toolbox(es) to help live our lives more freely. You'll just have to try another tool (less insulin perhaps) next time around.

Happy gardening.

And, by the way, I really enjoy your writing. Some really great phrases and honest expressions. Thanks.

[art-sweet]

First off, congratulations on the beautiful garden and on being active. I think that when we consistently let diabetes stand in the way of being US, we lose something more important than a temporary high or low sugar. I see this as well in your insistence that our supplies not be ugly and medicalized. Aesthetics matter to you as an artist and a designer, and diabetes shouldn't change that.

That said, you're a pumper, right? Could you set a temporary reduced basal over night instead of, or in addition to, eating a more fatty dinner?

[birdie]

As always, your support and feedback helps so much. And thanks too for the smart suggestions. I need to be nudged on this stuff sometimes because I get caught in old habits and forget that I have "tools in my technical tool box" that I can use...like the temporary reduced basal overnight idea. That sounds great and I will try it next time. Admittedly, I'm a bit of a chicken when it comes to technical "experimentation" but in this case, I pretty much knew what the outcome would be, so to try something different, probably would have only helped. I see more dirty hands and aching muscles in my future, thanks to the collective wisdom of the OC.

[Kerri.]

Those sneaky lows, even when you've taken "the right steps" to prevent them, are just that: sneaky lows. They come right up and steal your sensibilities for a spell, trotting off with them and not returning until you've hit the cookies. (Or in my case, eaten almost an entire jar of peanut butter. The aftermath of that was intolerable.) Thank goodness for the "technical toolbox" that we have as a result of our meters, pumps, and varying insulin therapies.

And thank goodness for "the collective wisdom of the OC." I love that.