Exercise is going to kill me. I mean, it’s good for you and everything, but it’s still out to bite me in the butt because blood sugars are so hard to manage, and I can’t ever seem to find a pattern.
So my school is on a block schedule, and therefore every other day I have dance class for an hour and a half. I love dance class. I am not exactly what you would call coordinated and it takes me a million practices to get something right, but it is a really really fun class. Right now we are learning the choreography to a swing dance that we are performing in a couple of weeks, and earlier this week I was low in the middle of class.
Oh, and one quick thing! It’s really hard for me to tell if I’m low when I exercise, so when lacrosse season started again I put my CGM (continuous glucose monitor) back so I could get an idea of when I was going low. Usually the CGM doesn’t get readings fast enough, especially when I’m dropping quickly, but something is better than nothing.
So I was low earlier in dance class this week. I realized I was low when it was taking me longer than usual to get the steps down, so I tested, and sure enough, I was 56 mg/dl.
So today I had dance class again and I didn’t go low during, but I went low immediately after class had ended. So I was sitting in AP Lang eating my lunch and waiting for break so we could go to lunch, and of course I forgot to bolus, so when I tested after I felt crappy near the end of class I was 286 mg/dl. Lovely.
I pretty much rode at that blood sugar during the whole last period of the day and it was with that blood sugar that I started lacrosse practice. I gradually went down to levels within range throughout the practice (I checked my CGM practically every five minutes) and then, of course, at the end of practice I was low. I wasn’t feeling low (the whole exercise and can’t feel your blood sugars thing), but I knew something wasn’t right. But I was already late for my clarinet lesson so I just jumped in the car and drove and stuffed a granola bar and some oreos into my mouth on the way there. Just a basic assumption that I probably needed to dose. BTW, I wouldn’t follow the example I set.
By the time I got to my clarinet lesson (rush hour is a killer) I actually felt low so I drank some juice and ran inside. And then at the end of the lesson my CGM alarmed telling me that I was 179 mg/dl. Sigh. When I got home I was in the mid 200’s mg/dl. So I dosed and then waited until 9:00 to eat dinner.
I wonder what people who don’t have diabetes worry about.
Oh, and I found this really funny picture on Facebook so I thought I would share it.
Cio.
Sincerely,
Claire Montgomery
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Claire Does Lacrosse
Great post! It’s amazing all of the things you think about that nondiabetic’s never consider. Thanks for keeping us in the loop.
Love this post! Great writing skills!
Are you going to college next year!??!! Have you chosen a school?
HI Claire,
I love your blog – I found it while looking for some pre-teen – teen blogs that I thought my daughter would like. She is 12 and was diagnosed a little over a year ago – and pumping for just a few months. Still wrestling with basals and roller coaster days, but thank goodness she, like you, has managed to keep her sense of humor! Keep up the good work!
Gretchen