I mentioned in my last post that I have reclaimed a bit of free time since finishing college. My live classes finished on April 25th and my last assignment was completed on April 30th (yay), so I was anxious to get back into my regular pre-college walking routine after a total abandonment back in September. Actually no, that’s a huge fib, I really wasn’t but I am desperate to get rid of some of the Covid kilos that have piled on since I’ve been glued to screens and books 😩 and that’s my real motivation.
If you’re reading this blog and you live with diabetes using insulin or any other glucose lowering meds, you’ll know that just restarting an exercise routine is not that simple. Right!
So before college BC, I would plan my walk as soon as I dropped my teens to school, because I felt if it didn’t happen then it wasn’t going to happen. This is about one hour post breakfast and insulin dose, so I would take very little insulin to cover my breakfast, allowing my glucose (BG) levels to go quite high to prevent massive drop in glucose from the exercise plus active insulin and to avoid ending up as a hot sweaty mess right inside my front door laid out at the bottom of the stairs.
I MADE this work for me for many years. I was willing to sacrifice 90 minutes of in range BGs for no hypos. But last week, on day two of my walk and after having almost nine months with great BGs, I started to get frustrated that I had to make this choice and became less happy with this sacrifice. This also coincided with an after walk hypo and rescue treatment as seen below. I also started to get really annoyed that something as basic as going for a short walk involved this level of calculation and planning.
I now resent the fact that I have to let my blood sugars go so high to avoid this crash and burn which caused me to lay out on the couch until the sweat stopped trickling down my hairline and the shakes stopped.
On the third day, I tried giving my insulin 30 minutes before breakfast (pre bolus trick) and giving less to reduce the spike. The result was still super high sugars but no crash. So then, I started to contemplate all the other choices available such as going for my walk later in the morning when my breakfast insulin is past its peak (2+ hours) or having breakfast after my walk which really isn’t a good idea because I do wake up hungry.
By day four, my anst and annoyance was building and I decided to try the ‘walk later’ approach. So set my alarm for midday and hoped beyond hope that I would step away from what I was doing and go for the stupid, annoying walk. As I was putting my runners on I realised that I still needed to reduce my background insulin so I did that and hoped that it was enough. Ideally I should have done this one hour beforehand to take effect, was I going to have to set a second alarm?
Guess what! It worked. Flat steady line for the whole 40 minutes. Did I actually mention already that I’m not trying to do 5ks or anything, no this is a stupid, piddly 40 minutes stroll.
The Complication of combining Diabetes & Exercise needs more acknowledgement in Healthcare Circles
Most of the time my diabetes fits into my life but when it comes to exercise I have to rearrange my life to avoid hypos. For most of this week, I was consumed by memories of all the times that healthcare professionals advised me to “just get out and exercise”, without any mention of what I have to do to avoid low blood sugar crashes. I got really annoyed when I thought about that diabetes clinic appointment where no staff member had diabetes specialty training and told me that walking would help get rid of baby weight, even suggested buying a double buggy for the babes without knowing how bad by financial situation was at that time. To just get out and do it! By the way, that was the appointment that reduced me to a sobbing mess once I got to my car afterwards.
Thankfully, reading Sarah Gatwards fabulous blog post on A Bumpy Life, who is counting down the months until her 50th Diaversary in 10 months. She writes about how diabetes hasn’t stopped her from doing anything but has regularly interfere with living a “normal” life.
“I sometimes feel that there is a rising tide of pressure to appear super-human and show that type 1 diabetes need not and has not stood in your way. However, I feel that type 1 has often stood in my way and even after all these years, continues to attempt to do so. …….,… “type 1 has regularly interfered with my ability to lead a “normal” life.”
Then I yelled “hell ya” at this meme from Diabetes Hero Squad! That felt really good!
@DiabetesHeroes on Twitter
I know that once I make it through 5 to 10 days of trial and error experiments I’ll find what works for me again and I did but that deciding to walk away from what I’m doing midday is definitely proving problematic.
I offer my apologies now that you’ve made it though my ranting post and want to sincerely thank you for allowing me to get this all off my chest because I really do feel much better. I promise to find something a bit more positive to write about next. Maybe I’ll write about the craic at the monthly Diabetes zoom hangouts with other people with diabetes because that did put me in a nice happy place.
Here’s a collection of my previous posts on my exercising pains with less angst and more humour:
2010 - Exercise or Torture - A post on deciding to actually do exercise once I got my pump
2013 - Why Exercise is tricky for type 1 diabetes Series - My trial and error experiments to do diabetes better while exercising.
2017 - The Weight Issue around Exercise
2017 - Weather: The Diabetes Havoc-er - When the best laid plans for exercise fall foul to the weather and the diabetes fallout.
2017 - The Hill and the Hypo - hypos while walking