I would love to be writing a blog post at 2:26 AM about how incredible a drunken night with my friends was. Unfortunately, that's not the case of this post - it's 2:26 AM, I've been trying to fall asleep for about 2 hours, and every 20 minutes or so I wake up shaking and confused. Since 9pm tonight, my blood sugar has struggled to get above 70 and for most of the night it has been in the 50s.
Sunday had me complete my 40 mile ride mostly in zone 3, in 2 hours and 3 minutes; then it was out for a nice hour long zone 2 transition run, about 6 miles. For the 3 hours of exercise I need 460 to 480 grams of carbohydrates. During the bike I took in about 120 grams of carbs, then took in 80 more grams of carbs before my run. Post run I had Endurox for 50 grams of carbs, and ate an entire flat bread pizza for another 135 grams. After that I added a Whole Foods "super foods" salad, and had a fruit smoothie - about 80 grams. I should have taken in enough carbohydrates to avoid a huge deficit (unless this is cumulative from during the week).
After the salad and smoothie when I noticed the lows I've added 2 glasses of orange juice, a 1/4 clif bar and now a clif nectar bar. Hopefully the clif nectar bar at 2:20 AM does the trick. I feel my mind and body slowing down as I write this so I can only hope that means my blood sugars are bouncing back up. I had hoped that avoiding late nights out with my friends this weekend and only having a couple social beers at our Darden Trivia event on Friday and tailgate on Saturday would help me avoid this. My recovery week isn't off to the start I had hoped it would be!
Showing posts with label Low Blood Sugar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Low Blood Sugar. Show all posts
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
"Don't You Get Tired Of Eating????"
Last night at about 11:15 pm I flicked the bedroom light back on to test. Kim asked what's up and I said, it feels like the room is spinning so I thought I should test. The meter flashed a "51" so I went to my stash of clif builder bars and began to munch away. That prompted Kim to ask "don't you get tired of eating?"
She's not the first person to ask this question and certainly won't be the last but it is one of the most frustrating things about diabetes. Not the question, the fact that sometimes you just can't eat enough to keep glucose levels high enough. Her second question, "well isn't there something else you could do besides eat?" Was also a very valid question and brings up a huge dilemma. I told Kim, I could turn off the basal rate in my insulin pump and hope that my blood sugar rebounds in 30 to 60 minutes but the downside risk with that is huge. At 51, if there is still insulin on board even with a 0% basal rate one's blood sugar level could continue to fall to very dangerous levels (which makes me question the ideology behind the new minimed pump). So in that I have always found the best thing to do when faced with a low is to eat.
Of course I have other options besides clif bars of any variety but have found the blend of protein, carbohydrates and organic goodness is a great healthy way to fight lows or eat in general - I swear I have to be one of clif bar's largest non-corporate consumers. I place a $125 to $250 order through drugstore.com about once a month. I'm not a huge fan of glucose tabs as I don't really like sugary things and gels do some interesting things to my gi tract, fine when you live alone but when your girlfriend is already sick of living with a zoo animal one has to try and keep those things to a minimum.
So to answer the question - yes I get sick of eating but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.
She's not the first person to ask this question and certainly won't be the last but it is one of the most frustrating things about diabetes. Not the question, the fact that sometimes you just can't eat enough to keep glucose levels high enough. Her second question, "well isn't there something else you could do besides eat?" Was also a very valid question and brings up a huge dilemma. I told Kim, I could turn off the basal rate in my insulin pump and hope that my blood sugar rebounds in 30 to 60 minutes but the downside risk with that is huge. At 51, if there is still insulin on board even with a 0% basal rate one's blood sugar level could continue to fall to very dangerous levels (which makes me question the ideology behind the new minimed pump). So in that I have always found the best thing to do when faced with a low is to eat.
Of course I have other options besides clif bars of any variety but have found the blend of protein, carbohydrates and organic goodness is a great healthy way to fight lows or eat in general - I swear I have to be one of clif bar's largest non-corporate consumers. I place a $125 to $250 order through drugstore.com about once a month. I'm not a huge fan of glucose tabs as I don't really like sugary things and gels do some interesting things to my gi tract, fine when you live alone but when your girlfriend is already sick of living with a zoo animal one has to try and keep those things to a minimum.
So to answer the question - yes I get sick of eating but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Getting Used to the Pump
Two things occurred in the past 24 hours that have completely convinced me to go on the pump. Last night I was battling some lows - my Dad's 66th birthday was last week and last night I was able to have a slice of cake with him. To account for the pizza my family had for dinner I took 6 units of novolog and added 4 units for the cake. I started to get a headache about an hour later but my bs was a manageable 157. A few hours later I had dropped all the way down to 55 and needed a full glass of orange juice and 3 glucose tabs to return to normal levels. I realized that if my pump was filled with saline and not insulin I simply could have reduced my basal rate for a 1/2 hour to account for my mistake with the bolus injection - way easier than eating a ton of food to counter the combination of lantus and novolog.
The other thing that sold me on the pump was my time at the driving range today. As I previously stated one of my biggest fears was being comfortable with the pump during athletic activity. After 4 orthopedic surgeries I decided to hang up the cleats and turn to lower contact sports for my athletic endeavors. One of my passions is golf and it is really important to me that diabetes interferes as little as possible with the game. Today was my first time swinging a club while trying out the pump and I was thrilled with the results. In 90 degree weather, sweating like Patrick Ewing in the 4th quarter the canula stayed in the entire time. I'll attribute the problems with the infusion site I had during my run to my ignorance/ inexperience in setting up the site. In the future I plan to use IV Prep, I need to do some more research on which infusion set to use, some people have recommended the Unomedical Comfort Set. So I think I'll give that a try when I get my real pump, I plan to tell Danielle first thing Tuesday morning to file the paperwork so I can get the Animas 2020.
The other thing that sold me on the pump was my time at the driving range today. As I previously stated one of my biggest fears was being comfortable with the pump during athletic activity. After 4 orthopedic surgeries I decided to hang up the cleats and turn to lower contact sports for my athletic endeavors. One of my passions is golf and it is really important to me that diabetes interferes as little as possible with the game. Today was my first time swinging a club while trying out the pump and I was thrilled with the results. In 90 degree weather, sweating like Patrick Ewing in the 4th quarter the canula stayed in the entire time. I'll attribute the problems with the infusion site I had during my run to my ignorance/ inexperience in setting up the site. In the future I plan to use IV Prep, I need to do some more research on which infusion set to use, some people have recommended the Unomedical Comfort Set. So I think I'll give that a try when I get my real pump, I plan to tell Danielle first thing Tuesday morning to file the paperwork so I can get the Animas 2020.
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