Guess who is going to Colorado in 3 days.
ME!!!
As you might remember, I've been wanting to go out there ever since I went with a youth group 2 years ago, and NOW I GET TO!! I'm going with both my brothers, their wives and my niece.
Am I nervous? Oh heck yes. More nervous than I was last time. See, my brothers even after spending quite a few years of their lives in the same house with a diabetic, are fairly clueless. They both moved out before I started pumping, and let's just say things changed A LOT when I started pumping. I don't think they even know how to use glucagon. (I plan to fix that). One brother seems to have it in his head that we can go out and hike from 6am to 6pm. All day. Every day. With an 11month old and a diabetic? I think not. Well, at least I hope not. The plan is to cut basals in half right off the bat. The time change and the travel will start me off high, but I haven't found a good solution for either.
Ahh! I have to run, but any tips on flying, adjusting to new time zones, major hiking and anything else that might be helpful (good sights to see?) are greatly appreciated!
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The rantings of a type one college student.
2 comments:
Hi Jen,
don't adjust to time zones -- adjust to your sleep schedule. That is what mainly influences the variation in your hour-to-hour basal needs.
Regarding hiking, of course you can hike from 6am to 6pm. Reduce your basal an hour or 1.5 hours before starting out. For strenuous activity -- running, or biking hills with extra weight -- I go down to as little as 10% to 30% of normal. Actually, if I run with a 30% basal set, my BG will drop at least 100 mg/dl in the first 10 to 15 minutes. You may want to remember that you can always bolus for a high, but lows suck.
Test after the first 30 minutes (15, if your heart rate goes to the upper end of your zone) and then at least hourly -- more often if you see a falling trend of feel a hypo coming on.
If you go hiking on more than two days without rest days in between, you should also consider what to feed yourself on the trail. As a rule of thumb, you should consume at least half your caloric expenditure, ideally in some delayed-release form that will keep you going for an hour or two. Think Clif Bar or something similar here.
Munching is not necessary if you are carb-loaded; or if the activity is only two or three hours, and you can rest and replenish afterwards. But for all-day hikes, you can survive one day without snacks (your performance will suffer badly, of course), and you can maybe drag yourself through a second day, but that's it. Worse, if you deliberately deplete your glycogen stores, glucagon will be useless just when you need it most.
Have fun!
Cheers,
Felix.
Hi Jen,
Nice D-blog you've got going!
Have you found me yet at www.diabetesmine.com?
Visit me sometime and maybe we can exchange links.
Best,
AmyT
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