I live an active life, and especially now that I'm experiencing such great stability while on my insulin pump, I have begun building back up my training. But training more often requires multiple duffle bags and numerous apparel changes. Tracking down all of my stuff all of the time, is not something I'm always successful at.
I'm pretty good, but I have a lot of shit. Bunch of stuff for the dogs, I blame them for most of it - especially their habit to trample over my stuff, often stealing my clothes. I was joking at work that I always pack underwear at work just in case. Now the case isn't that I am incontinent, it's that my dog steals my underwear off of my laundry piles. Webelos. I will be prepared.
But try as I might to track my stuff, it's inevitable leaving the house at 4am that I'm going to make mistakes. It's humorous when it results in me riding the Rev3 Dells course in my soccer sandles - less funny when it's the control unit for my insulin pump. Shit.
It took me 20 hours to find it. I was at home and looked everywhere to assume I must have left it at work - but upon getting to work, realized that it must be at home. Check every jean and jacket pocket, retraced my steps, bake tracked to the pool and even to the Bavarian Sausage house. Seeing as I was without my controller I wasn't able to bolus (dose for carbohydrates in my meal). No carbs in Old World German Salami. I've had salami breath the entire day.
I made an additional mistake that made the loss of my controller extra dumb. In anticipation of going for a morning run - a case in which I would want to turn my pump off for the hour preceding, during and even an hour after. Without my controller unit (PDM - aka Personal Diabetes Monitor to turn the basal insulin flow off - my solution was to simply remove my pump, which was still slowly dosing me with 0.2U of insulin per hour. I was still confident that I would be able to go home, find my PDM, go for a run and upon return, install a new pump.
My PDM wasn't at home. I cleaned everything. It wasn't at work. I was panicking. This thing would be $800 bucks to replace. Frustrating. The clock was ticking. If I went longer than 4 hours without insulin in my body, it would start to fuel itself with fuels that would eventually (in conjunction high bloodsugar) acidify my blood to a point where I could go into a comma and die.
Scary. So what to do? Step 1: keep some insulin in my body. I still carried my Juvenile Novolog Pen - even had a needle tip stashed at work. I wanted to match my basal rate of 0.2U/hr but now I only could dose in 0.5U increments. To match this I dosed 0.5U every 2.5 hours. As mentioned my major calories from the day were in the form of glutinous salami. As a result, my blood sugar remained within my target range of 80-120mg/dl. As the insulin slowly left my system I could observe my BG values slowly climb. The balance our my 0.5U bolus as a basal, I would drink a 20g carbohydrate drink.
That's how you think on your feet. The mental stress was exhausting. I would have been fine had I not been trying to do this during a very productive and long day of work following several days of lower than preferred sleep.
But I'm back in control today. Heading to see my parents today. I'm going to introduce them to the 21st century bringing wireless internet technology. Grandparents should know that their kids would visit more often if they got their own wireless. Hoping to teach my dad how to use the Wii and Netflix.
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