After the mad rush of December, frantically attempting to beat the clock in order tie up loose ends for the year, shopping around for Christmas gifts and meeting social obligations of the festive season, January arrives.
The world simply seems to go to sleep in January.
School’s on holidays, some of the lucky ones get to take extended leave from work, and the seemingly endless stretch of sunny 30 degree days just seems to support this quiet, lazy notion in the world.
I’m sitting here at my desk, with a bunch of fresh ideas in my head and seemingly endless time in front of me, plodding along at this slow leisurely pace.
Which might be great for me, but not so great for my diabetes which has decided to hop on my back for the ride.
I don’t exactly have the energy or the enthusiasm at the moment to be pre-bolusing for my peanut butter on toast. I can’t bring myself to correct dropping blood sugars with glucose tabs, when there’s a tin of Shortbread on my bookshelf or chocolates in the fridge. Guesstimates are trumping maths in my insulin dosing more often than not.
It’s harder to get outdoors when it’s hot, and the Australian Open is proving to be a pretty good excuse to crash in front of the TV at 4pm.
When my FreeStyle Libre is on, I’m motivated to keep those graphs looking pretty. But when it comes off, I can’t see what my blood sugars are doing all the time and I’m not so motivated to keep them between the lines.
I find it harder to accommodate diabetes devices in the warm weather. I’ve briefly contemplated another pump break, but I think my month-long vacation in November was enough to get me over my rut for the time being.
The one symptom that warm weather doesn’t produce for me is hypos. Sure, physical activity without carbs or basal adjustments sends me low. But a hypo just because it’s hot? It simply doesn’t happen.
I’m very much looking forward to this sleepy Summer daze coming to an end, and hopefully finding my diabetes mojo again soon.
Until then, I’ll be spending as much time as I can at the beach.
We are doing some camping and beaching this summer, but have run into a new problem. After re-connecting to his pump after swimming, my son’s set often becomes blocked. Worse, we don’t know it’s blocked until he goes to bolus for a meal, or he displays hyper behaviour.
Yesterday it happened after swimming, while we were on a bushwalk along cliffs. It took all my willpower to stay calm and to get Owen away from the cliff (he was yelling at me) so that we could do a BGL and attempt to clear the blockage, and do a correction dose.
Blockages post swimming have been happening pretty regularly now, and clearing doesn’t always work, so we have to do a set change. Do you ever have this problem?
Interesting…I’ve never noticed that problem. My BGLs usually run a bit higher after a swim from being disconnected from my pump. Insulin can also spoil in humidity or really hot weather, which you probably know already 🙂
We ended up talking to our Medtronic rep, and she recommended a pump change. In looking through the pump history, we discovered that my son had 19 blockages in the month of January! Enough to make anyone want to give up on the whole thing.
But here we are, new pump arrived 3 days ago, now we need to test it by going to the beach (before the warm weather runs out here in Tasmania!)
Brr, our world is full of snow and cold and winter misery. I will be over soon so when I knock let me in, I will only stay about 3 months or maybe 4, I will keep up with the weather in Indiana and let you know.
I love summer.