Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘exercise’

Nov 12

11 Comments

Pell Bridge Run.

When my friend Liz asked me to do a race with her in November, I was more concerned about whether or not I was home to participate instead of concerning myself with the specifics of the race itself.

“November 10th?  Sure, I’m home that weekend.”

And then I looked at the details:  it was a a 4.2 mile race over the Pell Bridge in Newport, RI.  At 6.30 in the morning.  On a Sunday.

A Facebook message to my friend:  “Liz, I finally followed directions and signed up. But this shit starts at 6.30 in the morning? Blargh.”

But what sounded like the absolute suck was a really amazing experience, watching the sun rise as several thousand runners crested over the bridge, moving towards a common goal.


Performance-wise, I struggled, but that’s okay.   Lots of rookie mistakes in play:  a terrible night’s sleep (< 4 hours), a new infusion set put in morning of, a fasting blood sugar of 298 mg/dL that required an aggressive correction bolus (so that I would come down in time to not have the desire to pee on the peak of the bridge), and too much insulin on board (IOB) when I met the rest of the racers at the starting line.  Thankfully, I reduced my basal rate at 4 am when I woke up, so I didn’t have my normal dawn phenomenon rate in play.

CGM check 20 minutes before the race:  158 mg/dL with an arrow pointing straight down
Meter check for confirmation:  139 mg/dL.
Bananarama:  Ate a banana without bolusing for it, and chewed a Shot Blok to get some carbs coursing through my system before setting off.
Packing heat:  And I had my Spibelt with two sleeves of Shot Bloks, my Dexcom receiver, and my meter.  I was ready for anything.

At 6.25 am, five minutes before the starting gun, I was 108 mg/dL on the Dexcom with an arrow pointing due east, so I hoped the banana/Shot Blok combo was enough to see me through.  But as the gun fired and runners started up the bridge, I felt that telltale heat washing over my body in waves of oncoming hypoglycemia.  I popped another shot blok, but shaky hands told me I needed to consult my CGM, so 3/4 of a mile into the race, I acknowledged the 50 mg/dL  and the down arrow winking back at me.

“You can go screw,” I thought.

I had to slow my pace down to fuss through the low, but after a few minutes (and thanks, in part, to the adrenaline that surely helped spike me closer to range), the down arrow disappeared and was soon replaced by a gently sloping northeast arrow on my Dexcom graph.  I continued down the bridge, and then through downtown Newport, towards the finish line.

It was early, it hurt, I was a little sluggish post-low, but my legs responded to my requests, and I kept going.

Thoughts of “I can’t do this,” were replaced by, “Oh hell yes I can.”

I’m not a fast runner.   Not a graceful one, either (more of a plodder).  But I get there.  And even though diabetes was a bit to blame for delaying my sprint across the finish line, it is fully to blame for bringing me to the starting line.

(And this run gave me a great Big Blue Test to log – 139 mg/dL at the outset, 158 mg/dL at the close, after 4.2 miles, 44 minutes, and about 40 grams of carbs.  Exercise for the freaking WIN!)

Related posts:

Spot Off. Not What She Thought I Was Doing. Ketchup and Mustard.

Oct 10

4 Comments

Guest Post: See You in the Slipstream!

Virtue Bajurny calls herself  “a Type 1″ and has had diabetes for 20 years. Until finding Connected in Motion she hadn’t been able to meet and befriend another Type 1. She lives in Toronto, but now calls Connected in Motion home. She is a social worker and is currently working as the Community Manager for Connected in Motion.  And today, she is writing about the Slipstream.

“The term ‘slipstream’ describes the wake of fluid or air behind a moving object, which (because of its velocity and air pressure) helps create a suction that pulls following objects forward. This means that if you are, for example, a cyclist following another cyclist you will require much less power to maintain the same speed than if you were riding solo. In other words: you’re still doing a lot of work, but not as much as you would be if you were doing the exact same activity on your own.

So, why are we talking about this effect in a diabetes blog post? Well, for me, the two have a lot to do with one another. Every year for the past five year’s Connected in Motion has hosted something it calls Winter Slipstream. It’s a weekend where a bunch of type 1s get together for outdoor activity, indoor chat sessions, and hanging out. Like the slipstream described above, there is always a funny thing that happens that weekend: diabetes feels easier when you’re dealing with it in the group.

This past year was my third Winter Slipstream and early this fall I was fortunate enough to attend the Western Slipstream event on Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada. Something that struck me at this last event is where I am now, a place I don’t think I could have arrived out with Slipstreams. First, I went from knowing no one else with diabetes for fifteen years to have a ridiculous amount of friends with type 1 now. Those friendships have proven an awesome source of support.

Second, I keep thinking about high ropes courses: the first time I encountered them at an event I only just got up the ladder to the high ropes; the second time I made it part way across the first challenge; and then at Western Slipstream I did the whole course!

To me, this point just illustrates the support and encouragement of Slipstream weekends—people are there to help you through however far you want to challenge yourself. I feel like often we, as people with diabetes, are told what to do with our diabetes. Having people around that get what the challenge of diabetes is like, trust that I know my own situation best, and meet me wherever that might be really feels like a breath of fresh air in my life with diabetes. I feel so lucky to have this ‘slipstream’ in my life now; it’s allowed me to achieve things personally, professionally, and diabetes-wise that I never could have imagined if I were outside of it and on my own.

The CIM Team, in partnership with Riding on Insulin and with the support of Insulindependence, are excited to bring the energy of the Slipstream to the Pacific Northwest in October. This will be the first time that the Slipstream has traveled outside of Canada and they are excited to see where it will take them in the future. Click here for more information and to register: Pacific Northwest Slipstream.

In the meantime, keep in touch with the CIM Facebook Page or Twitter, and check out some previous Slipstream experiences on their YouTube Channel. 

Hope to see you in the Slipstream!

Related posts:

Guest Post: I’m Going to Pump *CLAP* You Up! Sort-Of Guest Post: What Do You Wish Health Care Professionals Knew? FFL: Social Media as Part of the Prescription.

Sep 9

5 Comments

Up and Running.

Being on the blood sugar wagon is good, and easy to stay on once I’m settled in and wheeling along, whistling Dixie or maybe not because I can’t whistle so perhaps instead humming the theme song to The Facts of Life.  But holy moly, falling off the wagon hurts, because it’s usually a face-first plummet into mud, or some unmentionable.  Like full-sugar pudding.  Or a pile of cacti.  Or perhaps shit.

For over a year, diabetes was painted into the corner by being diligent about testing, correcting mild high blood sugars (bringing those 150′s back to 100′s, with less fear of hypoglycemia), and faithfully wearing/reacting to/being proactive about readings on the CGM graph.  Once I was in a good grove of those activities, things were solid, and I had the meter averages and A1C results that (finally) reflected the work I was putting in.

Unfortunately, when my husband was away for two months and I was both solo-parenting and finishing writing my book, I didn’t do very well staying on the wagon.  “Shut up; I tried” became a crappy mantra I hung on to while trying to keep things afloat until Chris came home.   And it became clear how quickly good habits can pull loose at the seams and unravel into some sloppy diabetes management.  (Yes, I’m on wagons and painting things into corners and working on some stitching, it seems.  Metaphors for breakfast!)

Chris has been home for two weeks, and the blood sugar part of climbing back on the wagon has improved.  Checking my blood sugar first thing in the morning, before doing anything else, is part of the routine again.  (I mentally picture my meter as a handcuff, holding me to the bed, and I can’t get out of bed until I test.  Which works, in theory, until the mental image starts to feel inappropriate, at which point I start to feel like a pervert.)  Reacting to blood sugar numbers is becoming easier again because the responsibility of house and child is shared again, freeing up some room in my brain for diabetes math.

What I’m having trouble with is the forcing of exercise.  Over the course of Chris being away, I wasn’t able to run much due to Bird-watching, and getting to the gym with regularity was tough due to the same issue.  Despite having an ellipmachine in the basement, I wasn’t feeling it by the time Birdy was asleep.  Most nights, I was asleep early, too, or up until embarrassing hours, working.  In the course of two months, stress and exhaustion ripped the fun out of working out, and my stamina and fitness and weight and general feeling of “healthy” went out the window.  Now that I’m trying to get back into the rhythm, it’s challenging to find that fun again because I feel like I’m jumping out from a sloth-ish starting point.  It’s the time, though.  Finding time for this stuff sounds so easy, in theory, but in practice, it’s tougher to pull off.

When I have time, I like going for a run.  (Shockingly enough, I actually enjoy running now, versus a year ago when running a mile made my lungs feel like they were going to fall out of my body and flop against the sidewalk like dying fish.)  My music mostly lives on Spotify, and making playlists for longer runs brings me weird joy.  I always feel accomplished when I finish, even though I usually hate everything about everything when I start.

As with everything else related to diabetes, once I climb back onto the wagon, it’s smooth sailing.  Making the effort for exercise is worth it, because even though it seems like a drop in the bucket, practice makes perfect.  I need to be the early bird, making hay while the sun shines and keeping my nose to the grindstone.  Rain or shine, I can do this until I’m blue in the face.

Related posts:

Not What She Thought I Was Doing. Sleep, Perchance to … Sleep. Raspberries.

Aug 22

18 Comments

Not What She Thought I Was Doing.

When you get into the car after going for a run and see a blood sugar of this:

… it’s way past time for glucose tabs.  So when you reach into the Spibelt you’re wearing to retrieve the glucose tabs that you stuck in there, encased in a plastic bag once used for diaper discards instead of the travel tube because you forgot that at home and you didn’t want to have the Dexcom receiver covered in glucose dust, it might look, to an innocent bystander, a little like you’re eating dog poop from a doggy clean-up bag.

“They’re glucose tabs!  I have diabetes, and I’m having a low blood sugar reaction,” I blurted out to the woman standing a few feet away, staring at me as she stood with her car door and her mouth opened.

“Oh thank goodness!”  She laughed, relieved.  “Because I thought you were … you know, I thought you were doing something you aren’t doing.”

“Nope.  Not eating dog poop.  Thanks, though.”

Related posts:

Raspberries. Looking Back: PWD in the Wild. Crocheting Out of a Low.

Aug 19

18 Comments

On Being An Athlete.

If this was college, and it was the night before the paper was due, I’d grab a dictionary and start feverishly typing the following:  “Webster’s dictionary defines ‘athlete’ as ‘a person who is trained or skilled in exercises, sports, or games requiring physical strength, agility, or stamina.  Middle English, from Latin athleta, from Greek athlētēs, from athlein to contend for a prize, from athlon prize, contest.”

(Let’s pretend it’s college, because I like that opener.)

Athletes, and the definition of who or what an athlete is has been on my mind for the last few days, especially after serving as co-host for the Insulindependence Greatest Awards Show in Diabetes.  Sebastien Sasseville and I had the honor (and the fun experience) of MC’ing the awards show from the House of Blues in San Diego on Saturday night.  The greatest honor that night, for me, was being able to announce Scott Johnson as the winner of this year’s Athletic Achievement Award, voted for by members of the diabetes community.   Scott, for me, is the EWD (Everyman With Diabetes).  His good days are good.  His tough days are combination of frustration and exhaustion.  But he keeps pushing, and keeps trying, and his daily journey is our daily journey, as people with diabetes.  He keeps his eye on the prize:  health.

That’s the part of the definition of “athlete” that really resonates for me, the etymology of the word.  “To contend for a prize.”

That is what I strive for, as a person with diabetes – the prize of a life that, whether hard-earned or thankfully easy, is healthy, fun, and worthwhile.  So many of us may never achieve, or want to achieve, the prize of being a world-class athlete, but every single one of us can be inspired to exercise and be healthy.  You don’t have to go up Everest (even though – good for you, crazy Seb), but you do have to move.  Go for a walk.  Dance in your kitchen.  Take the stairs instead of the elevator whenever possible.  MOVE YOUR BODY, even if you’re intimidated.

Be an athlete in pursuit of the prize of life.  We can all be that athlete.

Sounds a little cheesy?  Yes, indeed – straight-up gouda.  But sometimes the simplest things are what can make the biggest difference.  For the last few weeks, I’ve had trouble fitting regular exercise into the mix (more on that later), and I’m feeling the effects of being so dormant.  My blood sugars are harder to control, my body feels tired, and my brain feels slower on the uptake than usual.  Exercise might not be as  crucial a component in my diabetes toolbox as insulin, but it’s up there.  Tapping my inner athlete helps keep me healthy.  And seeing people in this community who are doing impressive things, great things, and consistent things motivates the hell out of me.

Congrats to Scott, and all of the other nominees and winners on Saturday night, for inspiring people with diabetes to remain in hot pursuit of that prize.

George Simmons, me, the little piece of fake bread that Birdy asked me to bring on my trip, and WINNAH Scott K. Johnson

Related posts:

Summiting the Everglades. Friends for Life Frenzy. Partnering for Diabetes Change.

Jun 18

11 Comments

mySugr: Feeding the Diabetes Monster.

At first, I was all indignant about the fact that diabetes was portrayed as a monster in this app.

“I can’t hate it!  Or fear it, right?  That makes it a tumbleweed of psychosocial turmoil, doesn’t it?”

In efforts to truly test the app, I went all in and embraced the monster.  Which is why I’ve spent the last few weeks playing with the mySugr app, developed by a team of PWDs in Austria. One of the team members, Fredrick Debong, and I had the opportunity to hang out again last week at Doctors 2.0 & You, and I remain impressed with his approach.  It was refreshing to see a long-time T1D’er (dx’d at the age of four) taking on his disease in a very new, very inspiring way.  Regarding mySugr, Fredrik offered, “With the mySugr Companion, we turn diabetes therapy and logging, a normally tedious chore, into something exciting! My personal inspiration for the app is based on my own life with diabetes – now approaching 30 years, which also include a three-year stint of diabetes burnout. If the mySugr Companion can make us smile while pricking our fingers, take pleasure in our small daily victories and feel the progress we make, then we change our world for the better.”

I’m all about small victories.  Let’s dive in!

Per the set up instructions, you’re encouraged to name the monster, so I went with the current arch nemesis in our home:  Norman Price.  (If you’re not hip to Fireman Sam, Norman Price is this little jerkface who lives in the town of Pontypandy and seemingly lights everything in a fifteen mile radius on fire.  He’s good for keeping the firemen busy, but life would be much smoother if Norman Price was shipped out to sea.  Hence, Norman Price became my diabetes monster.)

After filling out the settings tab (offering up information like “on an insulin pump,” “measuring blood units in mg/dL,” “carbs measured in grams,” and setting the hypo and hyper thresholds), I was ready to roll.  And still a little skeptical, because I’m wary of most apps.  I wonder how long the quantified self apps can hold my attention (even though, in full disclosure, I have been using the RunKeeper app since last November).

Inputting data on this application is easy, and graceful, not a clumsy casino game-esque scroll bar or a tangled web of things you need to click on.  Hit the plus sign, enter the glucose value, and any other details you want to make note of.  The one line that didn’t make it into the screenshot here was “Notes,” which to me is the best line ever:  an open field to put in whatever you’re feeling.  There were several open field note options throughout this app, which is brilliant because, try as they might, app developers cannot make a drop-down menu long enough to cover all the different variables that impact diabetes management.

I also liked how there were some standard, and cleverly illustrated, “tags” you could use for data input:

Each data point logged, and tag added, and note noted, earns “points” for the user, which are tracked on the home screen.  I find logbooking to be tedious and boring and lacking any/all incentive (because the reward for good behavior is … to do it all over again?), so even simply  seeing a point value climbing as a result of my efforts to stay on top of things makes enough of a difference to keep me attempting to earn.

I’m only experimenting with the standard version right now, but am thinking about upgrading to Pro.  In the meantime, I’m trying to earn a few days of Pro by use of Challenges.  For example, I’m currently working through the Greenhorn Challenge, which encourages me to input enough logging data to earn 50 points, at which time I’ll be awarded one day of Pro use.  Sounds like low-hanging fruit, incentive-wise, but it works.  Which is probably why it’s hanging so low, yo.

A few things to change?  I’d love to see a reminder – that you can CUSTOMIZE – for updating your logbook.  While I might throw the phone if it nagged me, having a reminder that I can set/unset (“It’s been six hours since your last glucose test!!”) would be handy.  I’d also like to see an open field for inputting exercise, as I don’t often exercise in perfectly round numbers, and it would be great to see an illustrated tag field in the future for exercise options.  Basically, I’d love to ditch RunKeeper and have mySugr take over entirely, logging everything.  The reports function is nice, as far as PDFs go, but having something I could export into an editable document would be more useful, for things like basal rates, insulin-to-carb ratios, etc.

I also need to mention the sounds:  THEY RULE.  I know how goofy it sounds, commenting on the little whizzes and clicks of an application, but the sounds on this app are faintly robotic, and I feel like I’m virtually ticking something off my To Do list when I tag a data entry or enter a blood sugar.  Even when you press the “monster” and he squeals for attention, it’s entertaining and borderline cute.  A++ for sounds on this app.

It’s hard to say how long I’ll keep at using this application, since I’ve only been using it for two weeks.  But, to be honest, it was kind of nice to feed the monster and feel a little removed from it.  Or maybe freed from that need to be all harmonious with it.  By distancing myself from it and letting myself treat it as a task-oriented “game,” it makes the philosophy of “test, correct, and move on” easier to adopt.

And Birdy loved it, which makes me like it more.   She likes clicking on his avatar and seeing him flap his arms around and squeal animatedly.  She likes hitting “done” when I finish entering meal data because that’s when Norman simulated chewing and says, “YUM!”

“I want to see the little Norman Price diabeedles guy.  He’s so frustrating sometimes, isn’t he, Mawm?  But not all the time, right, Mawn?”

“You are so right, Birdzone.”

Want to download the application and take it for a spin yourself?  Click here to go to iTunes.  You can find out more information on the mySugr website, and learn about the Companion version, as well as the coming-soon Junior version.  And you can learn about the Monster Pack (aka the development team), too.  mySugr makes the monster easier to manage, even if he’s a sometimes frustrating, but not all the time, kind of guy.   Clever application, and one that I can see inspiring PWDs around the world to take their monster to task.

Disclosure:  I don’t have any financial anything tied to this company.  I like Fredrik, and he asked me to try out the application.  So there you go.

Related posts:

Spot Off. Diabetic Fashionista. Raspberries.

Jun 3

7 Comments

Raspberries.

Why doesn't the alt text show up? What the eff, ketones?!

The infusion set was on the tail-end-of-day-three-just-about-day-four, so maybe it was starting to sour.

Or maybe it was going to the beach/playing in the garden/flying kites that tousled the site too much, causing the tubing to untwist just a little bit from the lock at the top of the insulin cartridge.  (Is that even possible?)

Or maybe it was just a rogue, weird thing that’s never happened before in ten years of insulin pumping but decided to happen yesterday.

Either way, it was the fact that my dinner bolus didn’t actually end up pushing through the tubing and instead pooled up at the top of my pump tube that caused my blood sugar to skyrocket and then for my body to throw out some borderline-moderate ketones for the first time in a long time.

Ketones suck.

It was one of those perfect storm moments, where all the crap that can be unsettled is unsettled:  no Dexcom sensor on (letting my skin rest for a few days as to not aggravate skin irritations – first break in a several weeks … of course), checked the pump site but not the tubing when my blood sugar came ringing in at over 300 mg/dL (had I checked the tubing, I would have seen the huge air bubbles and noticed the jacked up luer lock connection).  And of course the high made me mad because I thought I had calculated my dinner bolus really well, so I went for a “revenge run” in the neighborhood that night, not checking for ketones before I left (stupid).

Going up the hills on my run was a lot harder than usual, and briefly considered grabbing on to drooping branches to drag myself through.  I wasn’t exceptionally thirsty, but when I took a drink from my water bottle at the end of my run, I realized I drank the whole thing in one gulp.   When I got home, I noticed that the skin underneath my eyes wasn’t just dark, it was gray.  And  I realized I had that “high mouth” taste to my teeth, the one where you feel like you’ll breathe out and actual overripe cherries covered in model airplane glue will tumble out from behind your teeth.  I should have known I was throwing ketones.  Peeing on the ketone test strip and seeing the pad change from “beige” to “raspberry” wasn’t a shock.

It took a new pump site, lots of water, a Pedialyte popsicle that I permanently borrowed from the Birdzone’s “just in case” stash, and more patience than I actually had on hand to disengage from the ketone conundrum.  Nice touch, for my body to remind me that I do need to worry about ketones from time to time by making it a six hour mess that ultimately ended in a low blood sugar. (Thank you, 3 am glucose tabs, all running amuck in the very bottom of my dresser drawer. I’m not even sure how old they were.)

You may have won this round, diabetes, but I’ll get you next time.  Next time.

Related posts:

Spot Off. Hard to Capture. Memories.
« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox

Join other followers