New Adventure – Diabetes 365 – January 2, 2010

Today was about a new adventure. A snowshoeing adventure.

I can remember when I was little that we had this book and it was a story of a family of rabbits and they’d strap tennis rackets to their feet and use them as snowshoes. That has been my vision of snow shoes ever since I was little.

Today, I rode the worlds longest Tram to the top of Sandia Mountain, strapped on my first pair of snowshoes and went for a 3 mile trek. The first half was easy since we were already at the top of the mountain we got to head down a little. Heading back up was a bit harder. But it was fun and I will be snow shoeing again in the near future (I expect that I have a good 2 months to enjoy my new snowshoes and the lovely white power atop the mountain.)

Snowshoeing was just one of the adventures that I went on today. There were several adventures embarked upon today, only one of which was really seen. The snowshoes were seen. The insulin pump that I had to tuck into a pocket and hope that it wouldn’t freeze wasn’t seen. The pump tubing that I had to make sure wasn’t hanging about so that it didn’t get caught on anything or freeze while it was hanging out wasn’t seen.

And then there was the biggest new adventure of all…hiking, in the snow, trying to maintain my blood sugars without the ability to actually eat real food. Over the past couple years there has been many arguments concerning me and food before/during/and after training/racing. I don’t like to eat before doing said things, it messes with my stomach, no one quite understood that because they were all “you have to eat it’s imperative to your performance and you not crashing”.

While that was true and they were worried about my performance crashing during said things, they didn’t quite get the concept of my blood sugars crashing…the I don’t need insulin while training/racing because I can eat all I want and I still will do my activity in a perpetual state of low blood sugarness…yeah, that. Bring in the past month where my primary care doctor was all “your stomach isn’t digesting food” (see the stomach speaks) and then at my last CDE appointment where my doctor said “I don’t think your stomach is absorbing what you’re taking in, here try these” as she handed me liquid glucose…(see Dec 2009 Doctor Visit Debriefing) and we’ve got today’s predicament.

The “if I eat food, it’s going to sit in my stomach and won’t be absorbed until after I’m done snowshoeing” which would also impact anything I took in while snowshoeing…snowshoeing was new and I didn’t want perpetual low blood sugars while I was out there…it’s dangerous enough when I’m hiking, but add snow and extra coldness and that is a severe recipe for disaster.

This is where things get interesting. I didn’t eat breakfast. I went out there and carefully monitored my blood sugars and insulin levels appropriately. I was mostly okay.

At 7:30am my blood sugar was 96.

At 8:07am I was 111 and I reduced insulin to 60%.

At 10:00am I ate a Power Gel accounting for 27 carbs that I didn’t give insulin for.

At 10:27am I was 130 and feeling a little insecure with a perfectly fine blood sugar I dropped my insulin to 50% and at another Power Gel (strawberry banana flavor seems ok with me) and again didn’t take insulin. We did a little treking, but nothing serious, this is when I was playing around in the snow.

At 11:40am I was 144 and completely happy that my number was rising, albeit a little. Then we did some more treking, I’d say maybe around a half a mile and it did some damage.

At 12:36pm my blood sugar was 90 and I panicked because we were getting reading to go for our real snowshoe trek. I downed 2 glucose drinks, reduced my insulin to 35% and went on my merry way.

At 1:24pm I was 226 and feeling that I took too much glucose and not thinking ahead to the future I took 1.4 units of insulin (if this had been a me sitting around I’d have taken 3.6, but because I was exercising, I took less than the required amount, it turned out to be a good thing too!)

Somewhere between that last moment (the one you just read) and the next moment (yet to come), I had 3 chips ahoy cookies, the first real solid food of the day. I was afraid to eat more for what it may do to my stomach.

Cookies happened shortly after this happy picture

At 3pm when we had finished our hike back to the top of the mountain (the whole 1.5 miles back up) my blood sugar was 49. This is the part I hadn’t anticipated when I took the insulin. I know that going up the mountain is more work than coming down and I should’ve let the exercise take care of the blood sugar instead of dosing for it. At this point I had another glucose drink and 4 more cookies.

That was my new adventure, trekking about without food in my system, without putting food in my system while exercising, and dealing only with liquids and gooey type stuff for carb intake. Mostly it went okay. Obviously there’s still some stuff to learn. It’s not the ideal situation, but it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. I realize that no trainer or coach would recommend that plan but it’s what worked for me (mostly) and got me through the day without stomach problems until after dinner (stupid food, I’m telling ya).

I can’t wait for my next trek out in the snow…