I’ve long been troubled by uncontrollable glucose spikes, sudden increases in glucose that seem immune to insulin. The cause has been a mystery. And I’m stymied as to how to deal with them. Multiple injections of insulin seem to have no effect. It’s as though the insulin has lost its potency. I could find no obvious reason for this happening, and all I could do was ride out the storm.
I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes 20 years ago, and that status was revised to type 1 a few years ago. Insulin is the only thing that brings my glucose under control — most of the time.
Something happened last week that shed a spotlight on when insulin falls short, and I’m now able to connect the dots and understand, finally, what’s going on with my body. The key to all this is my Dexcom glucose meter, which gives me a window to every rise and fall in glucose.
Many fluctuations in glucose can be explained through food intake. But not much is said about a stressful event causing a glucose spike. I first experienced this a few months after I got my glucose meter. It was Christmas in 2016, and I was visiting family friends who mentioned they’d seen my brother, and did I know he was moving to the area? I did not know this. I’m not close to either of my siblings. I didn’t immediately know how I felt about this news of my brother moving closer to me, but my Dexcom set off an alarm, quite literally. I had a glucose spike.
That red flag prompted me to research ways that buried stress can affect glucose levels, and whether long-term unfelt stress could be behind my type 1 diabetes. It’s entirely possible that 65 years of unrecognized, unfelt but potent stress could have burned out my pancreas and left me with no option but to inject insulin.
I should add at this point that my background is journalism, not medicine. And the closest medical agreement I can find to what I’m feeling is in the work of Dr. Gabor Maté, author of When the Body Says No — the Cost of Hidden Stress and other bestsellers. He’s a retired psychiatrist from Vancouver, B.C. whose spent decades on this very subject of how trauma wrecks our health.
Back to what happened last week. It’s about Mary (not her real name), an elderly woman I met a couple years ago when we shared a hospital room. It was clear to me that she was being robbed by a “dear friend.” I had no idea that I’d be entangled in Mary’s affairs for more than 18 months. Finally, a couple months ago, Mary went to long-term care. The proper authorities are pursuing criminal and civil proceedings against those who wronged her.
She’s now safe in another city near her son, and my job is over. It took me a few weeks to decompress and find my footing back in my regular life. I was surprised at how much I’d emotionally invested in trying to keep her safe. Having all that stress removed overnight was unsettling, but welcome.
Last week, I got a call from Mary’s son. He filled me in on how she’s doing. I fell back into being a sounding board, and listening seemed harmless enough. I know his mother’s personality and how, when her memory fails her, the frustration and paranoia kick in. His story was all too familiar.
Overnight, my glucose spiked. I assumed my glucose levels were shifting again and, as they tend to do, were heading upward. But it was a steep, sudden climb. When I awoke my glucose meter said I was in the high teens. I addressed this situation with a generous doses of insulin. No change over a couple hours so I dose it again. And then again. It seemed none of the injections were having an effect in bringing glucose back to single digits. Despite 30 units of fast-acting insulin, that afternoon my glucose reached 20 mmols. I was at work and driving, so I waited until I got home at 2:30 pm to rage-jab.
Food was not the issue. I rarely eat before I get home, so this had nothing to do with food spikes. Some time that evening I thought about the phone call with Mary’s son. It got me thinking about my time with Mary. Sometimes it seemed as though I became someone else while I dealt with her. I often heard myself giving her calm reassurance and wondered who I was, if that makes sense. I felt detached, as though I was having an out-of-body experience. It didn’t feel like anxiety — it felt like the old me was dead.
And I do remember having those periods of high glucose during that time I was helping Mary and telling her about them. I never considered that the real cause behind the glucose spikes was sitting right in front of me. Or, at least, she was putting me into a high, but unfelt, level of stress.
I was finally able to bring the glucose back to somewhat normal. I did some deep breathing and meditation in hopes it would help. Something worked and by the next day things had returned to normal.
Now as I reflect, it seems apparent that the phone call triggered a trauma response and my body reacted in a true “fight-or-flight” reaction. If I lived in the wild, my body would be primed to flee an attack by a lion. Prey that escape such attacks are able to quickly shake off the stress and return to calm. But I had no way to calm myself, because that “rest and recover” part of my nervous system isn’t working as it should.
This buried stress has been with me a long time, driving up glucose. I have no way to flee from my body’s dysfunction. I’ll be injecting insulin for the rest of my life.
The good news is I’m learning more about how my body works and I plan to shine a bright light on buried stress and expose it for evil it is. And that bright light may diffuse the power of buried stress, so I’m better able to cope with it.
Leave a Reply