Category: Diabetes

Compromise Only Goes So Far…

Relationships and understanding require effort on both sides of the equation and this is something that many often don’t understand. As an example, I have a friend who seems to think he’s the absolute authority within his home and that his spouse should just go along and amend her lifestyle and choices to suit his. The problem with this is that relationships require compromise and while one could argue that the person who may not be keeping up with the other is the one who needs to compromise, that flow has to go both ways in order for a relationship to work. And to be clear, this applies to ANY relationship, not just romantic ones.

Throughout the course of my life, I’be been in many friendships, relationships and associations with people and it continues to amaze me how those relationships have often ended up one-sided. And I don’t mean that it was all them; some of it was absolutely me. I do have SOME ability to blame Diabetes in this mix, since my condition was very poorly treated during my teens when friendships were developed that should have blossomed into adulthood. But otherwise, selfishness and poor choices have led to the loss of some of the best friendships and relationships I’ve ever had.

That being said and before I fall too far down the rabbit hole, it’s important to remember that compromise can only get you so far. At the end of the day, one must recognize that there are aspects of your life that you should never compromise or abandon, simply because someone else is asking you to. Some of the relationships I’ve been in have been abusive and to the point where I damaged my health and happiness in order to prevent causing waves. But of there are people in your life who are forcing you to do this, you’re likely better off without them.

I’ve written about this before but I recently read one of those online “AITA” posts about someone with an eating disorder and how their chosen partner just wouldn’t understand when their need to eat kicked in. This reminded me of these aspects and I decided to list them out, once again. Here we go:

  1. Your Sleep

Sleep is a necessary requirement of life. A person can’t go without sleep and if one were to try, they would quite literally die. I could go into all the little details about what tiredness, fatigue and exhaustion can cause but that’s not what this post is about. The bottom line is that although we all love the concept of getting 8 hours of sleep in a night, there are a lot of reasons why someone may be unable to do so and may require rest outside of that. As a Type-1 Diabetic, my system usually responds to fluctuating blood sugars by having me get tired. This tiredness is generally eased by grabbing a quick nap; something that can be difficult if there are household responsibilities that are timely or there are children to help care for. But it should never be ignore simply because someone else dislikes it.

When I lived back home, I used to do some pretty erratic shift work that saw me exhausted and sleeping at strange hours, including at around 6 pm after I’d had some dinner. I’d always have this one wretched friend who’d come knock at my window (I was still living with my parents) until he’d wake me up. When I’d ask him what he wanted, he’d essentially peer-pressure me into leaving the house to go hang out, despite my explaining that I had worked and was tired. His reasoning was that I could always sleep later, since it was early in the evening. No, no I can’t asshole! Shift work doesn’t allow it.

My ex-wife used to be this way, as well. Any time I’d get home from working an overnight, she’d have just woken up and wold be raring to go for the day where all I’d want to do is crawl into my bed. She’d get angry with me for not staying up, despite logically knowing that I had been up throughout the entire night. Toxic. The bottom line and the takeaway here is that you should never sacrifice your need for rest, regardless of the time or what other people may say about it. Especially as a Type-1 Diabetic and knowing that all things affect my blood sugars, I shudder to think of all the damage I caused my self during the times I put off my own exhaustion in favour of others. OR how dangerous it might have been during times I drove or did activities I likely should have, during this fatigue. No more…

2. Your Hunger

If I have to explain why this one is important, y’all really haven’t been reading my stuff! Even if I wasn’t Type-1 Diabetic, it stands to reason that eating is an integral part of staying alive. Much like sleep, you can TRY to go without it but you’ll ultimately lose that battle right around the time you lose your life. In fact, if you try to stop eating, this constitutes an eating disorder, which is what prompted the writing of this post. The “AITA” article I read was about a person who had suffered an eating disorder and was in recovery. As part of their recovery, they had a requirement to eat immediately when they felt hungry, otherwise they could potentially relapse and go days without food.

This person was at a family dinner with their partner and at about 5:30 pm they started to feel hungry, so in keeping with their recovery, they ate a granola bar. Dinner was at 6:30 and they still ate normally and all was well until the couple left and the partner got angry because they considered it a disrespect to have eaten a snack in front of the family an hour before dinner. The couple broke up after the partner refused to acknowledge the person’ eating disorder and recovery and tried to claim that relationships are about compromise. The issue at hand here, is that one should never compromise on their need for food.

I totally understand that under very normal circumstances, waiting an added hour for dinner isn’t the end of the world and that growling stomach might even make for some interesting conversation and a few laughs. But in my world, even at a formal dinner, if I feel that my blood sugars are starting to drop, something is getting shovelled dow my gullet whether the hosts like it or not! Proper food and nutrition is also an integral part of your health and your health should also never be compromised, which brings me to m y third point…

3. Your Health

I have so much to say on this aspect that I would almost need a separate post JUST to explain… Your health actually contains and encompasses the other two points, which is why I saved it for last. For someone with Type-1 Diabetes, taking proper care of your health and managing your overall condition is really the only way to survive until you reach your golden years. But not everyone is always on board with this. Letting someone know that you have dietary restrictions, food requirements or any other conditions that require one to take certain steps will often fall on deaf ears. It’s a delicate balance of trying to make others understand, mixed with the fact that you don’t owe anyone an explanation as it relates to your health.

A good example I have is a kids’ birthday party I brought my oldest to, last year. The party was slated to start at about 4:30 and although I assumed there would be snacks and cake for the kids (it WAS a birthday party, after all) I didn’t want to assume that any adults would be fed, as well. So, I had some dinner before heading over. Setting aside for the moment that I appeared to be one of the only adults who stayed with their kids, the family was all smiles and friendly demeanour. That is, until the food came out. They had ordered pizza for EVERYONE, adults included. While this is an extremely nice gesture, I had already eaten and pizza is one of those really difficult foods to bolus for, especially after I had already eaten.

I made a point of explaining that I was grateful for the offer but couldn’t partake. I even included the fact I had Diabetes. Although they “kind of” said they understood, I could see that they really didn’t. It got worse when the cake came out and everyone was having a piece and I declined on the basis that since I wasn’t home, I didn’t want to upset my blood sugars. It was at that point that I could tell the hosts were experiencing what I can only assume was offence. I get it, I mean it is a birthday party and one of the people there is refusing all food and cake. But sometimes people need to understand that it isn’t about politeness and there may be an actual health component to it.

The bottom line, and I should get to it before I stretch this post another several pages, is that compromise is all well and good, but not at the cost of your health and well-being. You should never compromise your health or need to explain when you’re tired or hungry. One’s well-being is difficult enough to manage without having to justify or explain at ever step. Taking care of yourself is the first priority. And as I often say, even if you’re one of those folks who are always trying to help others, it’s very difficult to help others if you haven’t helped yourself, first. Food for thought…☯️

Mouse Trap… (Not The Game)

I remember this one time in my twenties when I attended a karate class during the summer. It was a gruelling two hours in a non-air conditioned environment where most people had to practically pull themselves out of the deep pool of sweat on the floor that they had created. Once class let out and given that it was summertime, a few of us decided we wanted to climb to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain to watch the sunset. I challenge a couple of them to climb the west face with me. they foolishly accepted.

To provide a bit of context, Sugarloaf Mountain is an extinct volcano that sits at under 1000 feet at its summit. There’s a perimeter trail that goes around the base and an ascension trail on the east side. It’s pretty steep, but there are guard rails, steel ladders and various rock formations that help a person reach the top. It takes about forty minutes. The west side is a sheer face. That is all. It takes about twenty minutes to ascend, provided you actually keep moving consistently and steadily. Lots of people do free climbing but very few people back home have been exposed to it. All of that was followed by climbing back down, showering and attending a local pub for a cold beer to end the night. And that night ended well past midnight.

Meanwhile, flash forward twenty years and I pulled my back by sneezing this morning. Time stays consistent but the passing of said time has a way of slowing us down. Although time is started to catch up and I may not be able to train as much, as hard and as fast as I did twenty years ago, the important thing to remember is that this “seizure” of one’s body happens far faster if one sits idle and does nothing. The important thing is to stay active, keep moving and recognize that one’s body may occasionally need a bit more recovery time when performing the same level of exercise.

I was inspired to write this post when a colleague described his fitness routine in anticipation of a trip to Machu Picchu. He was describing how he’s slowly building up his strength and cardio, being cognizant of his body and his requirement to heal. This woke me up to the fact that not so long ago, I could hop out of bed and hit the ground running. Nowadays, it takes several minutes for the signal to get up to travel from my brain and for my body to stop swearing at me to quit pushing it. Then, when i finally do get up, all of my joints sound like a hundred mouse traps going off at the same time.

Time catches up on us all. There’s no escaping that (at least until I discover the secret to vampirism). But that doesn’t mean one needs to give up and throw in the towel. It’s important to keep moving and stay active, especially for someone with Type-1 Diabetes. Sometimes it might feel easier to just kick back and let time make fools of us all. But nothing is ever accomplished by taking the easier path. Food for thought… ☯️

Chaotic Un-Balance…

Type-1 Diabetes is an extremely weird condition. Think about it for a moment… Your body produces insulin, which is carried through your bloodstream by particular cells. Then, all of a sudden, your immune system decides that these cells are a no-no and begins attacking them. The subsequent result is your pancreas finally throws up its hands and says “Fuck you, too! guess I’ll stop trying…” Although this typically takes place within the first four to six years of a child’s life, prompting the original misnomer of “Juvenile Diabetes,” it can also occur in adults, depending on some conditions.

Once you’ve been properly diagnosed with type-1 Diabetes, your life dramatically changes. All of a sudden, you need to monitor and calculate everything your body takes in. You need to test your blood several times a day and you need to administer injections of artificial insulin since your body no longer produces its own and even if it did, your body’s immune system would just shoot the messenger, anyway. It can be a very chaotic balance of do and don’t that most people have significant issues maintaining.

Although the average layman is inclined to think, “What’s the big deal? Just stay away from sugar and you’ll be fine…” No, no Kyle! I won’t. As I learned the hard way, almost a decade ago, it’s about more than sugar. It involves carbohydrates as a whole, which as some of you may be aware, is a primary fuel source for the human body. Once again, a chaotic balance.And considering this year marks four decades with this condition for me, if you do the math properly, I haven’t carb-counted for the majority of my life, making my overall control all that much more difficult.

During my childhood, it wasn’t unusual if I was hungry to be given crackers. No big deal, right? Crackers aren’t cookies; they aren’t SUGARED. A glass of milk if fine, if I was thirsty. After all, milk isn’t juice and isn’t SUGARED. FML… the amount of damage that was done to my system during my childhood is immeasurable. It’s no wonder I was such a moody kid and had so many damaged relationships. And even WITH carb-counting, it gets pretty convoluted. For example, every loaf of bread has a slightly different carb-count, making the consumption of a sandwich a fun guessing game of either taking too much or too little insulin and dealing with THAT fallout. Fun, right?

The thing is, having Type-1 Diabetes, living with it and managing it is a life-long commitment. And you can’t be halfway in; it’s gotta be all or nothing. Don’t even get me started on the fact that you need to be physically active in order to promote good blood circulation, better overall health and positive blood sugar readings. That’s why it often irks me when people look at me and refuse to acknowledge that I live an incurable condition that I fight. Every. Fuckin’. Day.

The second-to-worse part is when someone tells me “it could be worse.” I think that’s one of the worst things you can tell ANYONE with a medical condition. Getting shot with a .40 caliber bullet will make a larger hole than a .22 caliber, but I that doesn’t mean I want to get shot by either. The same concept applies to someone’s medical condition. Is it true that I could be afflicted with far worse and detrimental conditions? Absolutely. It doesn’t mean the one I live with is easy.

The hardest part is that my hard work and commitment acts against me. Because I focus on my physical health and control of Diabetes, people assume that my condition isn’t that bad. The truth and reality is that my conditions isn’t that bad BECAUSE I do all of those things. It’s a delicate house of cards that will crash without remorse, the moment I stop or let my guard down. And as a closing thought, if anyone is ever curious about something related to Diabetes, just ask. Most of us will be willing to explain. Food for thought…☯️

Just For Laughs…

I gotta say, sometimes I just have to post something I’ve found because it makes me laugh or smile. Hey, they can’t all be long-winded explanations for shit, right? I found this while surfing other blogs and galleries. It took me several minutes to stop laughing over it, so here we are. Enjoy… ☯️

Your Health Starts With You

I was having a conversation about Diabetes and A1C readings with my wife this past weekend, when i started to discuss and bring up many of the other folks I’ve known through my life who have Diabetes. It made me realize that for the most part, almost everyone I know who has either Type-1 or Type-2 Diabetes has failed to take care of themselves to the extent that they’ve caused damage to themselves that can no longer be repaired. It’s made me realize just how involved my care has been and how far my training and efforts have brought me.

After four decades of living with Type-1 Diabetes, I enjoy the pleasure of retaining all my limbs and digits, have a clean nervous system, clear kidneys and have the heart of a horse. In fact, I ran a stress test just a few short years ago and even ran the PARE two years ago in New Brunswick against other candidates half my age. But such health didn’t come naturally or on its own. It took a lot of time, training and effort to maintain this level of health and avoid many of the symptoms and side effects of Diabetes that many of my counterparts have had to suffer through.

Before getting on an insulin pump, a lot of my Diabetes control had to be done by feel. Carb-counting wasn’t something I was familiar with and I still adhered to the concept that sugar was what I needed to avoid. That being said, I worked pretty hard on my physical health, pushing myself and my body until I managed to grow and develop without many of the limitations that Diabetes has brought on others. When I joined the martial arts, it gave me tools and methods to ensure I could continue to maintain my health well into my years, which is a practice I still observe today.

None of that is easy and it would absolutely be simpler to just sit back, take it easy and let my body rest. That would likely feel much better but time and others have proven that such a path is what causes quicker complications and a sooner death; two things I’m trying very hard to avoid. None of this means that I haven’t gone down some difficult steps before. In my youth, before I had full control and say into my treatment, I suffered through comas, vision complications and high A1C’s. But once I took ownership of my therapies and the course of my life, I was able to make a measurable difference. And that’s the key takeaway; Diabetes has no feelings, no emotions and doesn’t care whether one lives or dies. This is why it’s up to the person themselves to take steps to maintain one’s health and ensure a longer and healthier life. ☯️

Don’t Get Into A Slump…

Having a routine can be a good thing and can help ensure that there’s some consistency and smoothness to one’s day. If I take myself as an example, I’m comforted by the familiarity of waking up, making my son’s lunch for school, grabbing some cold caffeine and preparing for my day at work. Routines also allow us to save valuable energy as developing some muscle memory almost allows one to operate on auto-pilot, first thing in the morning. If it weren’t for auto-pilot, I’d likely show up to work in pyjamas instead of a suit. But I digress…

As handy as routines can be, it’s also important to recognize that they can bring a certain level of complacency to one’s day. And as we all know, complacency can be harmful, especially if we frame it in regards to something like martial arts. being complacent and set in our routine can be harmful because it could leave you vulnerable in the event of a real-life combat situation. This is why it’s important to throw in something unexpected once in a while.

Breaking one’s routines is also extremely helpful in keeping you from becoming bored with your fitness. If you ALWAYS do the same batch of exercises, every time you work out, you’re more likely to get bored and not WANT to work out. This is especially true in karate, where doing the exact same warm-up for every class will have some of your students’ eyes glazing over in a pinch. By changing things up and incorporating different workouts, it keeps things dynamic and engaging and will help with retaining students.

In my younger years, we would occasionally train outside during the summer. It was a small change and pretty rare but it added a little something. On occasion, I would train while under water. Not my head, mind you… I’m rather fond of breathing. Once in a while, I would train with my bo staff next to a local fountain. All of these things added a touch of flavour to my overall training that kept things interesting and exciting. If all one does is show up to the dojo, train for that class and go home, over and over, chances are you’ll hit a slump and be far more likely to do that whole “temporarily quitting” thing. ☯️

No Rest For The Wickedly Sick…

It’s been something of a difficult week for me, having gotten sick late last week and having whatever evil typhoid infecting my body carry into this weekend. I pride myself on not being the type of guy who does “man flu,” meaning I’m not the type to complain about not feeling well as a general rule. But even I can only take so much and sometimes an illness will put me down just as easily as the next person. It rather sucks, especially since I JUST started karate the week before last and missed all of this week due to illness. Not to mention I have my eye injections, this coming Monday. If I don’t heal up and feel better by Monday, I get to experience the shitty feeling of being sick WHILE getting needles jabbed into my eyes. Ah, life…

It usually seems that no matter the type of illness, one always seems convinced they could handle ANYTHING else. For example, if one has a stomach flu and is throwing up, they’d usually be inclined to say they wished it was anything other than a stomach flu. One gets a sinus cold where one is stuffed up and has difficulty breathing, one will be convinced they’d manage fine if they could just breathe and were sick with ANYTHING else. Illness, not that any version of it is fun, is a bit like always wanting what you can’t have. For me, the biggest pet peeve is being unable to sleep. I can’t sleep worth a damn at the best of times, between Diabetes, PTSD and nightmares. Add coughing into the mix and it’s simply a recipe for poor recovery.

Imagine having a dry, rasping cough and being unable to control when it hits. And no, before everyone jumps to conclusions, it isn’t COVID-19. Not every cough or sinus problem is COVID-19. But all bitterness aside, you feel like shit, you take some meds and nasal spray and lie down gingerly in bed with the hopes of getting some sleep in order to allow your body to recuperate from whatever illness is plaguing you. You just start to slip into a state of sleep when you feel that familiar itch at the back of your throat. You swallow in vain, hoping the minimal saliva will help prevent you from hacking up a lung, but to no avail. You end up hacking and retching, barely able to catch your breath. It only lasts about twenty seconds but the damage is done; you’re now awake and have to work towards trying to sleep. Wash, rinse, repeat and cry.

This has been my reality for the past week. I’ve woken up most mornings this week with dark, sunken and bloodshot eyes. As is the standard definition of ironic, I usually wake at a point where I was soundly asleep and likely could have slept for hours, had I not needed to get up for work. Such is life. I stumbled through my week, getting my work done and running the necessary errands, happy in the fact that I don’t have to operate heavy machinery and even happy that I no longer have to carry a firearm, otherwise I might have a problem. Given that it’s been over a week I should likely get checked. But given the current state of Canada’s health system and wait times, I likely have time to crawl into my grave and pull the dirt on top of myself before I’d see someone and get effective treatment.

So bad has it been that despite the fact I intended to get home from work yesterday evening and enjoy a beer and a cigar to relax at the end of my week, I was outside for fifteen minutes before coming back inside and retreating to my bed. Maybe I’m making it seem dramatic but I want to illustrate that whatever this is, is more than just a casual case of the sniffles. Couple that with the fact that my blood sugars have been all over the place and my meals have been sporadic and there should be plenty to talk about in a month and a half, at my next endocrinologist appointment. But i digress…

The big problem is that sleep is not cumulative. It’d be a lot cooler if it was… (cue Matthew McConaughey voice, if you know, you know!) Imagine having a day off and sleeping for a full 24 hours and not having to sleep for the next three days??? Imagine the productivity and things you’d get done? It’d be cool, but the damage caused by lack of sleep can’t be made up later on. Lack of sleep will cause blood pressure issues, headaches, fluctuating blood sugars and poor concentration and cognitive reflexes. None of that is good when you wander the adult world.

The fact that I’m rambling should tell you just how ill I am. I’m sure I’ll recover. Everyone recovers from illness. Until they don’t. But if I post tomorrow, I guess that means I’m on my way. I make fun, but as I get older I recognize that my body’s ability to recover is becoming less and less effective. Of course, my grandfather lived until his late 90’s, having survived every illness under the stars, including cancer. My father’s spine is slowly degenerating and he’s still fighting like and angry warhorse; emphasis on the angry. I’ll keep y’all posted. ☯️

A Chilly Reminder…

It’s somewhat difficult to believe that the summer season is already starting to dwindle… Just last week, we actually had a frost warning for the early morning hours in Regina. A little bit hard to believe, since we’ve spent the majority of our time fighting through laboured breathing brought on by extreme heat just a week or two prior. We’ve had some warmer days since, obviously. But the vestiges of summer are starting to disappear, with the evenings coming on earlier and a colder chill on the morning air reminding us that fall will soon be upon us.

With the change in weather comes a change to one’s body chemistry and a propensity for catching colds and all sorts of other fun stuff. As a Type-1 Diabetic, I often harp that just about everything affects my health and my blood sugar levels and an overall change in weather is no exception. As tends to happen at least twice a year when the weather changes to an extreme, I recently caught a pretty nasty illness that saw me bed-ridden whenever I wasn’t actively doing chores or working.

Getting sick definitely sucks and speaking personally, I’ve been through enough in my life without having to deal with every little bug that floats by. Unfortunately, such choices are not up to us and none of us are immune to the effects of changing weather (see what I did there?). That’s why it’s important to continue to work towards the betterment of one’s health and make sure that smart choices are taken.

Ensuring that one is properly hydrated is the first step towards those smart choices. Good hydration not only helps maintain good blood sugar levels but it helps with all sorts of other things as well, such as blood pressure, immune system and also helps to keep your heart from working harder when pumping blood. Keeping the heart happy is kind of a good thing from a, you know, staying alive standpoint. I’m definitely guilty of this since the majority of my fluid intake (at least in the mornings) are in the form of caffeine.

Eating a healthy diet is also very important as one needs all the food groups and a proper balance of vitamins, nutrients and minerals are required to ensure a strong immune system and over all health. This can be difficult, especially if you do shift work, have little or no time for meal prep or somehow manage to have fresh produce go bad before you actually have a chance to consume it. Given that the cost of everything is going up these days, spending that much money on stuff can seem redundant if all one does is toss it out.

Last but not least is exercise. It’s no secret that exercise can be an integral and important part of one’s weekly and even daily routine. It’s pretty hard to focus on exercise when one is sick and honestly, if you’re feeling like a bag of smashed ass, it may not be the time to start trying to beat your personal push-up record or breaking a heavy sweat. You could end up doing more damage than good, compromising your immune system and making it take longer to heal. On the flip side, sitting idle for long days on end isn’t the greatest, either. The idea is to find that “sweet spot” where you do something to keep your blood flow going and prevent undoing any of the progress you may have been making before getting sick.

Getting sick sucks but there’s no way to avoid it completely, so taking steps to mitigate the effects and the damage are important. Naturally, one can’t go running to the ER for every batch of sniffles (especially nowadays!) so if you get ill, you should prepare for a few days of fighting through it at home. If you see that it’s been well over a week and you’re still ill with no signs of getting better, you may want to consult your doctor or medical practitioner as it could be a sign of something that will need a push in getting over. ☯️

Freedom Has A Price

People often assume that I have it good, because they can’t “See” my condition. Diabetes is not something that becomes visible or well-known to others, at least not until you get so bad that you go blind, lose a limb to amputation or suffer organ failure that either leaves you incapacitated or you die. And yes, as morbid as all of those things sound, they are very real effects of Type-1 Diabetes. But like most unseen illnesses and I know that some of my friends and readers can relate, just because you can’t see someone’s pains or illnesses, it doesn’t mean they aren’t still severe.

The problem is that when you encounter someone who works hard at maintaining their health despite their condition, it can be off-putting to hear that they’re still having their difficulties. And many, there are. I’ve worked hard to maintain my health and keeps things balanced. In my youth, especially, I went through a number of Diabetes-related complications that set me back and did permanent damage. High blood sugars, vision problems and elevated A1C’s… I even suffered through several comas. True story… The longest was about four days long. Nothing is quite as disorienting as going to sleep on a Monday and waking on a Thursday, especially when you’re a young child and have no idea what happened. I was about my son’s age, in fact.

The point is, that balance can become exhausting and as much as I can appreciate how lucky I am to have all the benefits that I didn’t have, even just twenty years ago. Things like my advance glucometers, access to modern healthcare, insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitoring, proper nutrition and exercise all make a difference when trying to keep my longevity for as long as I can. So what happens when all the things that are a benefit to maintaining one’s health becomes burdensome? It happens, and that burden can cause the kind of exhaustion that see someone letting their guard down…

Last Saturday, my wife and followed through with our typical weekend plan of taking the boys out for an outing. We usually try to incorporate something that will involve other children so that they can socialize and play with kids; something that happens less these days, thanks to the pandemic. We opted for a large, well-put-together outdoor park named “Candy Cane Park.” It has one of those rubberized surfaces with tons of structure to climb and play on. We started our morning by picking up some burgers and finding a place to sit. We cut the boys loose and they went off to play. Oddly enough, it didn’t take long for Alexander to come waddling over and sit with us.

Nathan played only briefly before confessing that he wanted to leave as he had no one to play with and wasn’t interested in being at the park. I don’t blame him; the summer heat is still pretty intense these days and I preferred not to be outside in the sun in that weather anyway. We loaded the boys back into the car after being at the park for less than an hour. Nathan confessed he preferred to go to an indoor pool and I could totally get where he was going with it. It was agreed that we’d bring my wife and Alexander home and that Nathan and I would go to the pool together. Since my CGM sensor was set to expire in a couple of hours, I removed it and set it to charge while we would be swimming.

I also noticed that I only had about 8 or 9 units of insulin left in my pump. An interesting thought came to mind. Since I wouldn’t be wearing the pump in the pool and would need to switch out the infusion set anyway, I removed EVERYTHING. People who don’t wear an insulin pump won’t understand the unbelievable freedom behind removing all the tethers associated with Diabetes. Even as I got into the car, i noticed that little things, like adjusting and shifting the pump to allow me to sit properly, didn’t need to be done. Going to the washroom becomes an easier and quicker endeavour, since I don’t have to wrestle with tubing and removing an infusion set.

Nathan and I wound up going to a public pool location we hadn’t been to before, since our usual go to pool was closed to the public to promote the city’s new outdoor pools. That seemed counter-intuitive to me, a bit like closing a fast-food restaurant to promote a food truck, but what do I know? We wound up at the pool location that I found, which was closer to the downtown core. It was HUGE… Olympic-sized and contained three different sections, a massive whirlpool that could accommodate plenty of people without feeling that they were sitting in each other’s laps and several diving platforms.

Nathan and I had a blast, playing games, going on the diving boards and occasionally relaxing in the whirlpool. The feeling of being able to go everywhere and do everything without worrying about my sensor’s adhesive melting off or my infusion set popping out goes beyond description. We spent well over two hours in the pool before I finally called it quits because it was supper hour. I felt that it was one of the best outings that Nathan and I had taken together and we both enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. I even felt generous enough to grab him a burger on the way home as he was complaining he was hungry.

I was feeling pretty good about my day, by the time I got home. Minutes after I was home, I began to feel the tell-tale signs of high blood sugar. Although my levels were normal when I left and I had insulin in my system before I removed my pump, I had gone more than three hours without a basal rate being added. By the time I got downstairs and changed my infusion set and tested my blood glucose, i was sitting at 18.5 mmol/L. For you non-Diabetic folks, that’s ridiculously high and not a healthy way to maintain one’s balance.

I installed a new CGM sensor and slowly started trying to get everything back under control. I had to eat, so I had little choice but to bolus accordingly and have something to eat. It took several hours, some caffeine and some patience, before my blood sugar finally started coming down. Our evening ended somewhat early and everyone went to their respective slumber but I was awoken in the middle of the night by my pump. Seems my blood sugars didn’t STOP when they reached a normal level, they kept dropping. Half an hour and some fast-acting glucose later and I was back to sleep.

The experience was fantastic and I had a lot of fun at the pool with Nathan. It was nice to be reminded of a simpler time when I wasn’t hooked up to portable machines like a dollar-store cyborg. But that experience was costly. It was a sober reminder of how quickly things can go south when I let my guard down and choose not to maintain control. Diabetes can take over quickly and in fact, one can’t live without insulin for more than a little under two weeks. That little bit of freedom came at a price. And given my age, it’s not one I can pay easily. Or often. ☯️

Back To School, The Parent Edition…

Yesterday, I wrote about Nathan’s reluctant return to the classroom as, like most children, he started a new school year. Then it dawned on me that I’ll be enjoying something of a return to school, myself. Albeit on a more leisurely level. This coming week, the dojo re-opens for karate class and I intend to be there; front and centre.

I had started with a local school of Shotokan last year and despite some injuries I sustained early this year, I quite enjoyed it. They closed out for the summer break, which is apparently pretty standard for schools out here. When I was back in New Brunswick, Sensei would never have contemplated shutting down simply because it’s summertime. In fact, I used to be the black sheep of my friends since I would quite literally pack up and leave fun afternoons of swimming in the woods in favour of attending a class. But I digress…

My point is that stopping for the summer has never really been my thing but it happens a fair bit, out here. I recently discovered that the Kempo school I used to train with never re-opened its doors. Although sad to hear, it made me feel a little bit better about never being contacted over the past two years about class. But Shotokan has been quite good. The dojo is a mere five minutes from my home and their style is similar in many ways to my own Uechi-Ryu.

This year, I look forward to continuing my martial arts education and adding new forms, techniques and lessons to my overall karate toolbox. It’s important to keep an open mind when training in a dojo whose style differs from yours. It can be a difficult journey and I acknowledge that I’m no longer what I used to be. But with some overall steps to ensure that other negative factors in my life are lessened and the room for growth is permitted, I’m sure it’ll be a great year.

So I guess that much like my son Nathan, this coming week will see me going back to school… Karate school, that is! I’m looking forward to it and it should be a nice addition to an otherwise stagnant fitness routine. Stay tuned… ☯️