July 9, 2010

 Preparing for this 3 day weekend was panic-worthy to say the least. I made a checklist of items to bring and I checked them off one by one. It went something like this:

1.     Jeans

2.     Pants

3.     Capris

4.     Tank tops

5.     Hoodie

6.     Undies

7.     Sneakers

8.     Flip flops

9.     Extra vial of insulin

10.   Insulin pens

11.   Pen needles

12.   Extra sites (but how many? I’ve accidently ripping them off and the sunscreen situation causes them to slide off)

13.   Extra meter

14.   Extra test strips

15.   Bathing suit, or 3

All this “extra” had put my mind in “extra mode” while packing clothes too- I ended up packing enough clothes to go on a 2 week cruise and enough pod sites to be gone almost a month. Better to be prepared, right? (And by that I mean be prepared for a hurricane, a sunny day, a sunny but cold day, and so on… it is Michigan, after all)

Right after I got off work at 10pm on Thursday night we were loading the car and on the road. 20 minutes into our trip and I was feeling dizzy. I knew it was not from my boyfriends driving, so I test… 92. That’s great except an hour ago I was in the high 200s and this much of a drop is dangerous. When I drop from the 200s to the 110s or less range within an hour I’ll continue to drop well into the low 50s to high 40s range. If that happens, no doubt I’d end up over treating and end up back in the 200s or higher. I sipped half a juice I brought with me and waited a few minutes to find out I was still at 92. “Not bad” I thought to myself with a smug little ‘tude, that is, until I see that there were still 3 live units (the insulin on board). This could go really bad really fast so we stopped at a gas station to get gas and I bought a sub sandwich that had a lot of bread and a cherry cheesecake cappuccino (the cappuccino…  it takes like cough medicine and I do not recommend it). We drove a few more hours and upon our arrival I tested again… 94… with no live units. Relief washed over me because it was 2am and I really wanted to sleep. Any higher or lower would mean that I would be up until at least 4 am testing and correcting or carefully calculating the number of carbs I would need and then testing after.

We woke up around 11am the next day and while we were getting ready to go to the beach, diabetes showed its annoying little face. On my phone I googled the nearest hospital, you know, in case of emergency. With diabetes, an emergency can show up unexpectedly and with that panic comes dancing into the scene, thinking it’s going to be a party.  Luckily, there is a hospital about 10 minutes away from the cabin. I bookmarked the page and make it available offline, in case the emergency happens when I have no service, which most likely would happen seeing that we are waaaay up north. Our swimsuits were on and we were coated in sunscreen and ready to hit the beach. I grabbed my pod receiver and camera and head out… we got there and the sand was blowing… What do I do with the electronics, especially the pod receiver? I wrapped it up in the towels we brought and reminded myself that next time, I’m bringing the small cooler to put these things in while we enjoy the sun. Speaking of the sun, I have a wicked tan line from my pod. Sunscreen can only protect so much and being half Italian, I tan very easily even with sunblock on.  Oh this beach, it was gorgeous. The water was clear and the beach was clean except for some shells, but the closer you got to the water, the cleaner the sand was. I know as a diabetic, I really shouldn’t be going barefoot anywhere… not even in the cabin, but taking my flip flops off and sticking my feet in the warm, wet sand was such an amazing feeling. I know diabetes pretty much dictates my life and shows its annoying little head every time I’m about to make a “nondiabetic” decision (like ice cream for dinner? OKAY!) but this one time I just had to ignore it. I didn’t want diabetes to stop me from experiencing everything with all of my senses. Of course, once my feet sunk in a bit and I couldn’t see my toes I’d pull them out in a panic of some type of lake creature hiding under the sand, silly, of course.  The weather there was just… perfect. Perfect enough to go swimming in a moderately cold lake. I have never gone swimming with my pod as I’ve only been using this pump since March and I really don’t remember what its swimming limitations are. We head into the water, jumping the little waves, when the boyfriend asks me “shouldn’t we get out? What about your pump? Can it be submerged for this long?” and I was oblivious to the fact that we’ve been in the water for at least 25 minutes. “Oh yeah, that. Thanks for reminding me” and we head back to our towels. What a pain in the D!! We were having a lot of fun acting like little kids jumping waves and splashing around when diabetes’ annoying little face appears once again, reminding me that fun has its limitations and I should be appreciative that he even let me have that much fun.

The weekend was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful with all that nature provided us to admire. Diabetes couldn’t take that away from me, at least not this weekend. I took pictures of everything and now I’m working on a scrapbook of our adventures and this really made me think… My vision is great now, but where will it be in 5 years? It’s time I got more serious with my diabetes and I plan on doing so and letting everyone know what I’m doing. I have a great endocrinologist now, but I have an appointment in two weeks with a new one through a different hospital to see what can be changed, maybe get some fresh ideas or find new motivation to keep my A1c level down…

Of course, I’ll be writing about more than just doctor visits and lab results… diabetes is a part of my life, but it isn’t every part of my life (even though on the rough days it seems like it is).

It’s great to be able to share my life with all of my sisters here at DS, I’m ever so grateful for this opportunity.

In good health and DSLove,

Sarah

Side note: I know that I’m sweet (isn’t that why I’m diabetic, after all?) but those mosquitoes are killer up north. My boyfriend wasn’t attacked as badly as I was, so that led to an interesting conversation on how maybe the mosquitoes are attracted to the sugar in me (that night I was running slightly high due to the few beers I kicked back.)