My Diabetes - Can A Diabetic Have A Sex Life? Part 6 Viagra, Cialis & Levitra

There is no point in taking expensive erectile disfunction pills like:

Viagra, Cialis or Levitra
If you are planning to ingest large quantities of alcohol with the romantic meal etc. I don't know why alcohol has such a deleterious effect on these pills, but it does.

Also, as I've mentioned previously alcohol prevents the body from using its own energy stores so their is an increased risk of hypo which again will kill off the effect of the pills.

Learning Points:

• Alcohol and Viagra, Cialis or Levitra don't mix

• If you have to drink, do some test to find the right balance for you

• Make sure you have sufficient carbs 

• Viagra, Cialis or Levitra will make your heart beat faster and burn more carbs

TBC

My Diabetes - Can A Diabetic Have A Sex Life? Part 4 Viagra, Cialis & Levitra

So what 'Daddies Little Helpers':

• Viagra

• Cialis ( tadalafil )

• Levitra

• etc

Unless you have taken an appropriate amount of carbohydrate and continue to do so during the exercise session none of these pills will help. They will only increase the blood pressure to nether regions, if you are not hypo, and are engaging actively. 

So before reaching for the pill draw its important to get the planning and the provisions correct.

Learning Points:

• These pills need carbohydrates to work
• These pills take time to work 
• During the 30 mins to 1 hour lead time your blood sugar needs to be higher
• If you frequently have hypos these pills are unlikely to help
• If you frequently have hypos these pills my make it worse
• Plan -- Don't Fail

TBC

My Diabetes - What did I do to try and avoid diabetic hypos

In reality it is impossible for me to avoid ever having a hypo, the real question is how can I lessen the chance of having a 'severe unexpected hypo' which would require the help from others.  What I quickly realised was that the most important thing to do was to discover 'My Hypo Early Warning Signals' so I could prevent a mild hypo from becoming something much worse.

The way I went about this was to make the conscious decision to become more aware of my internal self and my body. Before I became diabetic I didn't pay that much attention to my body. I knew:

1) If I was tired, I slept.
2) When I was hungry, I ate
3) If I ate bad food, it made my ill
4) If I I ran a long distance, I became stiff
5) If I stubbed my toe, it hurt

These were all the normal things, but I knew I had to go further.

So for a short period I kept a note book and gradually I began to notice things:

1) If I had to get up in the night to go for a pee
  --> my urine test at breakfast showed high sugars
2) If I woke up in the morning with a basketball bladder
  --> my urine test at breakfast showed high sugars
3) If I woke up in the night soaked in a cold sweat
 --> I was experiencing a night hypo and need to drink a high glucose drink
4) If I woke up in the morning with a tiny cold penis
  --> my urine test at breakfast were blue and very low
5) If I had an extremely full bladder and hadn't drank much
  --> my urine test at showed high sugars
6) When I broke out in a cold hypo sweat I smelt a kind of musk on my skin
 --> I was going hypo and needed to eat
7) If the images before my eyes started to get blotchy like looking through cloth
 --> I was going hypo and needed to eat
8) If my lips started to tingle and my chin became cold and numb
 --> I was going hypo and needed to eat
9) If I started to look red face and get a headache
  --> my urine test showed high sugars
10) If my calfs and thighs started to feel like they were full of treacle
  --> my urine test showed high sugars

This observing becomes a form of biofeedback, from evidence and feelings I very quickly became aware of my body and its needs and the signals it gave me when it was in distress.

Learning Point:

If I wanted to be in control of my diabetes, I had to know what it did to me and how those things, felt, tasted and smelled.

The most import thing I learned was:

The hypo is not my enemy trying to cut me down, its a friend warning me that I need to do something to prevent things getting worse.

TBC

My Diabetes - Riding my hypoglycemia 'hypo' bicycle

I view learning to become an Insulin Dependent Diabetic is like learning to ride my first bicycle. When I got my bike I thought I just get on and ride like everybody else, but this is not what happened.  I remember being frustrated that I couldn't ride a bike like my brothers and everybody was giving me advice and telling me how to do it:

sit on the seat and peddle you'll be fine (oops crash)
just peddle and move forward and you'll be fine (oops crash)
try sitting up straight (oops crash)
keep you hands tight on the handle bar grips (oops sideways crash)
going down hill will help you get your balance (oops crash)

Eventually my mother held the back of the seat just enough to stop me leaning too far on one side or the other.  Suddenly I had balance and was peddling and moving forward safe in the knowledge that she was holding me.

Then she shouted out I looked round realise she was no longer holding me (oops crash).  Then over time it became second nature, I can even ride without your hands, then get really cocky.. oops crash.

Controlling my diabetes was like this.  The professionals were very matter of fact.  They said if I:

1) Test my urine for sugars and write it in the diary
2) Inject the prescribed amount of insulin at the set time
3) Ate the right quantity of food
4) Exercise

Then everything would be okay and fine.

I did exactly what I was told to do and some days it worked and my blood sugars were low, and other days my blood sugars were high.  If I took the bus up the long hill to home I would be fine, but if I walked up the hill I'd be shaking like a leaf.

The real question for me was how to square this diabetic circle.  Like all medical instructions they seemed to be very rigid and inflexible.  It may sound incredibly straight forward to a dietician, or a specialist nurse or and doctor but real life is not that straight forward and simple.

TBC

My Diabetes - My First Hypo

My first hypo occurred just over an hour after the nurse left.

As she had not explained the warning signs and symptoms of a hypo and it caught me by surprise.  I had assumed that as my blood sugar was so high it would take ages to come down, but it didn't as I'd been starving myself for days.

I got up to go to the bathroom a felt a little unsteady on my feet.  Then I began to notice, what I have become to realise, are my warning signs of a hypo:

1) A cold sweat was breaking out on my arms and hands
2) The my back and my neck were soaked with this cold sweat
3) My hands were trembling and sweating
4) My lips began to tingle and my chin began to go numb
5) My penis had apparently disappeared to who knows where and was so tiny and cold it was a fiddle to urinate.
6) I began to get more light headed and feel like I was going to faint.
7) When I got back to the room Debbie asked me how I was and I said a bit faint.

Luckily, we were sharing the house with nursing colleagues who took one look at me and said, wow matey your looking very hypo.  One of them ran over to the nearby shop and bought a large bottle of lucozade(high glucose drink) and gave me medium size glass to drink and a 4 bar kitkat which I miraculously place in my mouth and devoured in a few bites.

I felt awful for around 15 minutes, and then suddenly like a switched had been switched back on I was fine, like nothing had happened.

My learning points:

1) Always have at least one bottle of high glucose energy drink or glucose tablets or chocolate with you or within reach.
2) Always make sure that you have appropriate levels of carbohydrate food available before you inject any insulin.
3) If you start to feel faint or dizzy sit down immediately, do not wait to fall over or faint as this could lead to serious injuries or may incapacitate you.
4) Always tell others if you start to feel unwell.

TBC

My Diabetes - My Diabetic Diagnosis

From 1977 - 1980, I trained as a Registered Mental Nurse, and had come into contact with people with diabetes, I had learned something of the history and I knew a little about the signs and symptoms. In September 1980 I became an undergraduate of Behavioural Sciences at a UK Polytechnic.

The summer of 1981 was warm, and therefore I did not immediately notice that I was drinking more than usual.  However, as the summer turned to Autumn I realised that I was beginning to look thinner than normal after having a flu jab and was drinking a lot.  I'd also found a local store that sold 'Cream Soda' a sweet drink from my youth and had begun drinking it in the summer heat to quell my thirst, but it appeared to make it worse.

By early October I really felt like I was 'dying of thirst' and it came to a head when I was in a local cafe that specialised in very large pots of tea. Shortly after it arrived on the table and without thinking I picked up the milk jug tipped it into the pot and started drinking from the pot. Debbie my partner was with me, and she looked at me and asked what was I doing and was I going to leave any for her?

I looked at the jug, looked at her and said, I have no idea what I am doing but I think I have must have diabetes mellitus.  Suddenly it all made sense.

In the school of nursing we'd been told that in the old days before urine test reagents (tablets), certain nurses and patients would taste a sample of the diabetics urine, and the sweeter it tasted the more severe was the patients hyperglycaemia 'excessive sugar in the urine'.  Knowing this trinket of knowledge, I excused myself and went off to the bathroom placed my finger it my stream of urine and tasted it. It was sweeter than the sweetest Honey and smelt heavily of the sugar puffs breakfast cereal.

I came back to the table and told Debbie I have diabetes. It was a Friday and we went straight to the Polytechnic doctor and told him what had happened and said I have diabetes mellitus.  He was polite but dismissive and said it was most likely an infection or reaction to a recent flu jab.  After some discussion he agreed to take blood or urine sample and said I was to come back the following week, and it was nothing to worry about.

By time we got back home I had urinated an embarrassing number of times and I noticed my legs felt literally like they were filled with treacle and my eyes were a little out of focus.  I said to Debbie, I don't like this I need to flush the sugars out of my bloodstream and so ate very little in the way of carbohydrates over the weekend and drank lots of water.

By Monday I was still urinating a lot, due to the large quantity of water I was drinking.  As I had very little in the way of carbohydrate intake, my urine was tasting less of sugar. When I went into the Behavioural Sciences department there seemed to be a bit of a panic on and asked a member of staff what was going on.  She informed me that they had been looking for me since Friday, that they didn't have my address and the doctor needed to see me urgently.

In the Doctors surgery, he informed me that my blood sugar on the Friday was way past coma levels and he was amazed I hadn't collapsed into coma.  I explained to him that I'd eaten virtually no carbohydrates all weekend, that I'd drank nothing but water and it was a three hike up hill from the surgery to my residence.

He took some more blood and urine, and arrange for a nurse to visit me that afternoon to give me Insulin.

My Learning Points:

1) My excessive urination without excessive drinking was an early warning sign that me kidneys were trying to flush something out of my body.

2) My excessive thirst on a cold day when I hadn't eaten lots of salty things or taken any anti-histamine tablets meant my body needed the fluid.  As my thirst was accompanied by excessive urination then it told indicated to me that I may have diabetes.

3) Tasting my urine is a quick, simple and not at all unpleasant test.  Urine is mostly sterile unless you have urine infection.  Also due to the sensitivity of the tongue to salt and sugar you need only the tiniest amount.  Normally urine is salty and insipid and never sweet if its sweet it shows the presence of sugar.

4) Had I not taken immediate action of reducing my carbohydrates to virtually nothing and drinking water, my blood sugar when have continued to rise causing me serious problems.

5) My prompt action prevented me from needing to be hospitalised with the condition.

TBC