I spent all weekend at a wedding for a college friend in a small town on the Massachusetts north shore. It was an incredible affair - beautiful ceremony, beautiful party, and best of all, wonderful people. But as usual, diabetes was there to make sure the logistical gymnastics didn’t quit.
It started at dinner before I left. I had a quick bite with a few girlfriends near the airport, and it wasn’t until I bolused for dinner that I noticed it was also time for a pump site change. Since Omnipods time out after 80 hours, there was no pushing it – I was heading for a five hour redeye flight and needed what little sleep I would get on the plane before arriving in Boston. I’ll change it after I get through security in the restroom at the aiport, I thought to myself. Which would have been a perfect plan – had I not been sprinting to my flight at the last minute, barely making it to my seat before the door was closed and we took off. Due to a wrong turn and an exceptionally long railroad crossing (seriously, don’t ask), my two minute drive to the airport after dinner ended up taking….a wee bit longer. So there I was in the aisle seat on the plane, extra pod and insulin in hand, with a complete stranger less than four inches to my left.
Hhhhm. Where do I start with this one? Hi, I’m Lexie, and I have diabetes. I’m wearing an insulin pump and need to rip my old pod off and apply this new one, after first filling it using a 27 gauge needle that looks like it’s used for horse vaccinations…
Hhhhm. No go on that approach. You guys know I don’t care who knows I have diabetes, but there are certain situations where I just don’t want to get in to it. This was one of them. I waited until takeoff, then until we leveled out, and popped up to go to the restroom for my site change.
Once back in my seat, I needed to get some shut eye so I wasn’t a complete wreck in the morning when I picked up the rental car. I had packed a sleeping aid, but those have always made me nervous – even though I’m very hypo-aware, I’ve always been too afraid that a sleeping pill would cause me to sleep through a low, and because of that I’ve had relatively little experience with them. I checked my BG, felt comfortable at the post-dinner 180mg/dL, and decided to take half the pill. I tucked my CGM in the front of my shirt so that if I did dip low, I would at least have the beeping CGM to alert me. And if I was too conked out to hear it, I guarantee it would have rousted my neighbor. I finally dozed off, mouth agape, neck wrapped in blow-up airplane pillow, and my blood sugar cruising at an altitude of 140mg/dL for most of the flight. So far, so good.
After landing, I made my way to the rental car (after grabbing a coffee), and headed in to Boston to pick up my friends. I felt a low coming on almost immediately after they got in the car. Keeping my eyes on the road, I clicked in to my CGM and confirmed that I was on the way south with a downward pointing arrow. I needed to get my blood sugar up before it was unsafe to drive – my friends weren’t covered on the rental, meaning I was the sole eligible driver. If the BG dipped to low, we’d be forced to pull over and wait on the big D to cooperate. I reached down and grabbed a GU from my purse, explaining the situation as I slurped down the sticky carbs. I felt things stabilize a few minutes later, and we chatted and laughed our way down the windy roads of Massachusetts to our destination on the coast.
The weekend was action packed – we had a clam bake right away Friday night, hair appointments for the bridesmaids first thing in the morning, and more diabetes landmines that you could ever imagine. Weddings can guarantee two items that always throw a monkey wrench into ‘betes management: carbs and alcohol (a.k.a wedding cake and champagne!), and it seemed both were everywhere I looked throughout the weekend. Between sampling what seemed like every version of a crab cake and the countless toasts throughout the weekend, it was no time at all before I had hopped on the “Blood sugar Roller Coaster,” with seemingly no end in sight. I dosed for the food only to have the drinks bring me roaring back down – Saturday night culminated with me raiding the wedding goodie bag I was given for chocolate to bring my BGs back up to an acceptable bedtime rate. And just when I finally thought I could go to bed, I looked down at my pump site and saw blood leaking around the canula. Not wanting to take any chances at bedtime, I threw off the covers, winced in the overhead light, and changed my damn pump.
Overall, I did my very best to keep up, but there’s only so much one can do when you’re dealing with so many factors. There’s appetizers cruising by, champagne being handed out left and right, excitement and dancing, and no pockets in my cocktail dress to put my CGM. I kept it in my purse nearby most of the night though, and backed it up as often as possible on my meter. Still though, my Dex ended up looking like a scatter plot by Sunday morning. And the “donuts and coffee” get-together to see the bride and groom off to their honeymoon didn’t help – I went from 265mg/dL to 46mg/dL in 45 minutes thanks to some stacked doses and glazed donuts – oy.
By Sunday afternoon, I was craving a carb and cocktail free meal and a nap, but found myself waiting on the floor of the airport, my flight delayed for at least an hour. And again, I soon found myself on a plane with a flight attendant offering me carb-loaded snacks. Hey, I guess I should be glad they’re feeding me anything these days, right? I snatched up the least offensive offering of the bunch and bolused for the chips per the package information. Six hours later, I landed in San Diego, exhausted and ready to wipe the diabetes slate clean from the weekend.
Traveling cross country over a weekend is tough on anyone, and it’s just that much harder when you’re managing diabetes the whole time. And diabetes is always there, whether you’re traveling the world or sitting in your office. It doesn’t matter what else it going on – we’ve always got to manage it or risk being sidelined right out of the fun. Being at a wedding also made me think about how I would handle diabetes when I get married some day – it’s not something that want to have to think about on such an important day. But as I’ve blogged so many times before, we don’t ever really get a break of taking care of the big D. Hopefully, in some moments though, we can at least put it in the back row, and not center stage.
Holy smokes party people! I Run on Insulin was voted one of the 2010 Top 50 Diabetes Blogs by bloggingawards.com and Medical Coding and Billing! The coolest part about this award is that bloggingawards.com bases their awards on content alone – meaning that the number of visits the site gets has nothing to do with the selection. They only award reader-nominated blogs based on the value the blog brings to their audience-so that means that I Run on Insulin was selected purely because of good feedback from you guys – WOW!
