“Huh. 223 mg/dL. Still.”
This was the mumbled mantra of our vacation to Maine.
Aside from the long drive to Bar Harbor (six hours, plus coffee stops and bathroom stops and “Hey, look at that lobster!” stops), the time we spend in Maine is usually very active. As a family, we did the hike around Jordan Pond (about 3.5 miles), the hike up South Bubble Mountain (with a stop at Bubble Rock), and spent hours walking through downtown Bar Harbor. The lure of blueberry ice cream was enticing, but I tried to avoid the sweets and instead downed buckets of iced coffee instead.
And yet my blood sugars were complete shit while we were traveling.
I wanted to blame my infusion set, but I changed it once while we were in Maine and my blood sugar numbers remained crap. I wanted to blame the bottle of insulin but it was the same bottle that worked just fine at home (and it wasn’t like we microwaved it or let it bake in the car). I wanted to blame my own actions but I was exercising, checking my blood sugar, pre-bolusing for meals, correcting highs, and sticking with reasonable carb intake.
So I blamed diabetes.
The graphs over the four days we were in Maine were gross. When I wasn’t high (which was the majority of the time), I was erring on the side of high, teasing the edges of 160 and 180 mg/dL all day long. Why? No clue. Hesitant to up my basal rate in the face of constant walking, I just watched the graph ride the mustard for a few days. Not convenient, because blood sugars running higher means more water, more “Hey, it feels like someone put cement in my sneakers,” more teeth sweaters, more bathroom breaks.
“Mom, do you have to go potty?”
(Fun when the four year old is asking me, instead of the other way around.)
Sometimes the numbers don’t make sense, and this time, I choose to roll with it for a few days. There are probably six dozen different things I “could have done” to take a bite out of the high blood sugar trend, but I didn’t want to the micromanagement of diabetes to eat up my brain on vacation. Instead, I did what I was willing to do and thankfully, now that we’re back at home, my Dexcom graphed has settled back into a more forgiving pattern of Pac-Man dots.
I prefer mountains in the landscape, not in my Dexcom graph.
We see the same thing with our daughter! Vacation usually equals high BGs. We are going to Maine for a week mid-Sept, we’ll see how she does. Last year we were in the Tetons and she was a mess! I thought it was the elevation perhaps.
The pictures from yesterday’s post were amazing! I can’t wait to go!
I would just blame Maine- I live in Brunswick and I’ve had some really stubborn highs for the past week or so. Nothing will bring them down… so I think it’s Maine’s fault.
Wow, an other Ellen from Maine that has D.
Glad you got to enjoy Maine for a bit, I live in Leeds ME and my numbers were really out of wack last week to I blame mine on the stomach bug I had and a bad vial of insulin,,,,,, Good thing that Lobster is low carb 🙂
I am almost positive that it also has something to do with transitioning seasons.
When the days are shorter, or longer, or colder, or hotter.
And of course blame diabetes.
arrrrrgg !
try try again
This morning I woke with a 425 ! I forgot to take my morning Lantus yesterday.
Brilliant, right ?
ARrgggg
You make everything fun with your yucky sayings: RIDE THE MUSTARD?!
“I was thinking of changing my nursing baby’s diaper, but then I decided what the hell? Let her ride the mustard.”
And yet ANOTHER reason I hate mustard!
I hate mustard, too!!
I think our vacations to Acadia may have crossed, or missed each other by just a few days. I attributed my often crappy blood sugars to the fact that there seemed to be ice cream EVERYWHERE in Bar Harbor, plus those popovers at Jordan Pond, and just the general overabundance of food wherever you turned. I just started on the Dexcom a few days ago, and one of the things I am most excited about is having visibility into my numbers while doing longer-term (as in, more than an hour) exercising like hiking and biking. Blood sugars aside, I hope you enjoyed your vacation. It was my first trip to Acadia and it was so beautiful.
Sounds like a nice vacation even though the numbers weren’t great. I’m sure it had nothing to do with you and everything to do with stupid diabetes.
Yeah, it’s always tough to figure out what to do with lows on vacation. I tend to take the risk.
Bad idea waiting for a bus at WDW, or driving across Nova Scotia at night. But I doubled my checking before pulling my car on a ferry or flying inverted above sunny Florida, and ran it a little high. WDW will take care of a low; other places, who knows?
Any time I’m around water or hard, concrete places (especially with traffic, like downtown Bar Harbor) I would err on the side of caution.
Ugh! Travel is so hard on blood sugars, I guess for a number of reasons. I am cutting way back on work related travel for that reason. But I don’t want to give up on fun travel, and just yesterday I watched my CGM misbehave because we had a fun day trip with the kids. SO annoying.
If we’re blaming states for high blood sugar, I’m adding MA to the list! I’ve barely gone below 160 in 3 days! Most of the time running somewhere in the 200s… yucky mustard for sure.