Hi Diana, thanks so much for your thoughts and concerns. I apologise for my reaction, genuinely, and especially to Mogs. I know she was very generously trying to help. I've seen many of her posts and I know she's tirelessly dedicated. I recognise that all the things you've said about her are true. I've been feeling like s**t all day about my petulant post yesterday. I'm just completely exhausted and feel like I'm reaching the end of what I can do for my dearest friend Sergei. It's overwhelming to feel all of this fear, sadness, frustration and anxiety. All the small resentments that grow up around this illness eventually just start to leak out and find voice in the world. I'm not a confrontational person at all, but last week I snapped at someone for letting her dog menacingly bark and lunge at a cat on the sidewalk. I stood there thinking why are you letting your dog drive that poor cat's BG level up. FD has become this all-consuming subject at the moment.
It just feels like nothing with this disease is ever enough, be it knowledge, testing, or duration of action of the inferior caninsulin that I'm stuck with (sometimes literally). I desperately want to get Sergei to remission but I feel hopeless about it because I'm sort of stuck with the weak tools (Caninsulin, limited veterinary motivation) available to me where I live. I openly confess I hate testing. I hate the anxiety I feel waiting for the sip of blood, the beep, the countdown, and then the way the number appears after all that useless anticipation, always depressingly high or nervewrackingly low--just further evidence of my incompetence at this whole thing. Plus it's expensive, it's messy, and it's demanding. And I hate even more that all the testing in the world is not going to put Sergei into remission or make any of this one iota easier, even if it helps me better understand what's going on with his body. I never wanted to have to understand. So yeah, testing has become just another thing to resent. We've really struggled to get to the number of tests we are currently doing, against all the petty hatreds I have of testing, against the advice of our vets (if it were up to them, we'd take him in once every two weeks for a test), against Sergei's resistance, and against my dread of needles and blood.
And now I'm just starting to discover for myself the logic behind testing. I'm seeing it. Really, until today, I heard everyone's insistence on testing as criticism and just didn't see the importance of it with Caninsuiln. I've now learned firsthand why it is necessary and useful. Today I desperately wish I had a better picture of what's been going on at different points in Sergei's cycle--how we reached a too low to shoot number at PMPS yesterday and Monday, way below the number we were getting at what we were told would be nadir. Before these weird numbers, I was able to live in uneasy comfort that our expected nadirs were mostly okay, a few low lows here and there but generally we were not in dangerous territory. All that came to an end this week when we got the bizarre readings that led me to post yesterday. I felt uneasy shooting this evening. Because we've now experienced firsthand an absolute need to know the PS values, we've now started adding AMPS and PMPS tests and are unhappily having to think about adding other points in the cycles that we never wanted (or thought we needed) to know about... until now. Ptnr is also starting to see the need for AMPS and PMPS and agrees other points will yield potentially useful info.
Many thanks for your intervention. Sincerest apologies to Mogs. I'm not really operating with great reservoirs of clarity and patience at the moment. I posted here last night because our vet is closed (one of their workers tested positive for COVID) and we had those strange readings at nadir and I felt a bit panicked about it all. I realise that nobody can solve these problems for us, that this is a very lonely disease, but I also know everyone here cares and does their best to help and I appreciate it. So, thanks. And even more especially on behalf of Sergei. Sorry for my long reply and the impulsive frustration of my post yesterday.
