2011-05-24

Lessons and Impressions

One of the realities of type 1 diabetes is that it is quite often impossible to account for every variable you encounter in the course of a given day.


Case in point, my evening workout was thwarted last night by an episode of hyperglycemia. I was certain I had done everything correctly yesterday, however, when I reviewed my tracking log, I discovered that I missed a single unit of insulin during lunch. That, combined with the extra activities I had undertaken over the long weekend, was enough to push my blood glucose into the proverbial Alps.


It's tempting to beat myself up over this a little. How could I be so stupid as to miss out on 30 whole grams of carbohydrates at mealtime? And to top that off, this had an adverse impact on my workout and my evening jam with my band. These things have a tangible impact on my life.


Realistically, though, nobody's perfect. It would be impossible to do everything perfectly, all the time. I am not a robot. So there are a some lessons to be learned from this:
  1. Don't feel too bad if you don't nail your insulin ratio. It's serious and potentially injurious, but after you've taken care of the problem, let it go. You did the best you could.
  2. "Stray carbs" such as carrots and a tablespoon of peanut butter here and there can potentially add up, so be very careful when you count your carbs.
  3. I never would have caught my error had it not been for my prototype food/exercise/blood sugar spreadsheet. I really need to finish this up and make it available to the rest of you. Perhaps we can "open source" it and develop something really useful. Stay tuned.
  4. If you have to cut your run short, cut it short. Don't give yourself a guilt trip over it, just take your medicine and try again tomorrow. My morning workout was already a good success.
Well, I think that's it.


As an aside, I'm testing out Blogger's email posting feature. If this post pops up several times or not at all, you'll know why.


Up Next: Diabetes Basics

2 comments:

  1. Definitely don't beat yourself up over it. I love the idea of open sourcing your tracking sheet and see what the community can do to improve it and tweak. Perhaps if we can find some time we can make it into a tracking app for a smart phone. I am sure they exist, but perhaps we could put some improvements into it.

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  2. The trick is finding the right format. It currently exists as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Some of the functionality is unavailable in Google Documents unless somebody writes a script, and uh... that's not my forte, as you can imagine. If you're down for some tinkering, though, we should see what we can do!

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