I went on vacation. That’s right, I left my office and ignored my email (mostly) for almost 2 weeks. It was wonderful. I plan to do it again sometime.
Right before I left, I had my quarterly checkup with the endocrinologist. He says my A1C is now down to 8.0. Could be better. Has been worse. He also suggested that I may want to increase my Lantus dosage to help bring my A1C down. I raised that up to 27 units and my blood sugars have been a fluctuating just has horribly as normal, but in a better range.
I have also realized that PWD (an abbreviation I have often used to mean password) can also be used to say person with diabetes. Some people with diabetes prefer this to the term diabetic. For some, this is a big deal. For me, it is not. Personally, I don’t care, but you will find that I will start using PWD whenever I would have said diabetic as people like me do care and I care for people like me. He has to care. This is a blog.
If you are a PWD, there is something you should know about going to Europe from the U.S. If you take a daily dose of a long lasting insulin, like Lantus, at the same time every day; that 5 hour time difference that we call the Atlantic Ocean is going to have an affect on your blood sugar for the first couple of days. You end up taking two shots in a less than 24 hour period and your body plays a little catch up. I didn’t notice any change. You haven’t noticed any change since 2005. Alternatively, if you are a PWD traveling from the U.S. to Europe and you take a daily dose of long lasting insulin at the same time every day; that 5 hour time difference that we call the Atlantic Ocean is going to have an affect on your blood sugar for the first couple of days. You end up waiting over 24 hours between two shots. You could always account for the time difference and just adjust the time you take your insulin while on vacation. And you could always start producing insulin.
I had a little trouble with low and high blood sugar while on vacation. High because it is difficult to carry all my diabetes stuff in my speedo and low because I wasn’t getting up and eating breakfast at my regularly scheduled time. That and I needed to back off a bit on my rapid insulin as I was taking more of my daily insulin.
Other than having diabetes, vacation was awesome. We went to Italy to see Beth’s family. Granted we didn’t see as much of Beth’s family as we would have liked, but we had a good time anyway. We spent most of the vacation in Duna Verde near the beach. Really we spent most of the vacation on the beach or in the ocean. It was awesome. I got a tan and apparently, I am now sexy. Even more surprising was that I was not sexy prior to the suntan. I’m not surprised.
Tata discovered an important lesson on vacation about digging in sand. In case you were not aware, digging in sand is often difficult due to the fact that sand has a tendency to fill the hole back in rather quickly with even the slightest tremor. This is especially important when you dig a hole under some playground equipment and then stick your head in the hole. If you move your head, the sand will quickly refill the hole trapping you under the equipment with sand in your mouth. Sand in your mouth makes it very difficult to scream for help and breathe. That little incident is getting added to multiple lists including:
- things Tata will never hear the end of
- ways to give Papa a heart attack
- Papa’s lastest nightmare additions
- ways to scare your father to death
- interesting methods for suicide
- things that can cause your father to have a panic attack
- how to make your father dig for your life
- things not to teach your baby sister
- thank God Mamma wasn’t there or she would have killed you herself
Tata seemed to be very accident prone for the entire vacation. She also had a run-in with a water slide that she lost. There was a short slide that one was supposed to sit down on. Tata decided to lay down to get some better speed and when entering a curve in the slide, her lower body curved and her upper body did a different maneuver more like a slingshot. Her face struck the slide, especially that part of the face that sticks out, and she ended up with a very painful nose bleed. Based on the amount of blood, most of the people in the pool thought she had been attacked by a shark and everyone was trying to escape with their lives. Thankfully he isn’t prone to exaggeration.
All-in-all it was a great vacation. We have a couple of stories that we will tell for years to come and a couple that I have already forgotten. I can’t wait to do it again next year.