We just got back from NYC. Not far for us, but we stayed over a few days and made a vacation out of a trip to see Mary Poppins on Broadway - which, by the way, was fabulous! I was dreading this - eating out, estimating carbs, extended bolus guesses, overnight checks and uncorrectable highs - all things I was anticipating with doom and gloom.
The last time we went on vacation was a couple months after Caleb was diagnosed. We went to Universal Studios with extended family for a week and it was awful. Universal Studios is great and we had fun, but I have as many happy memories as unpleasant ones of trying to arrange 50 carb meals at exactly 7am, noon and 5pm to avoid lows, and seeing high 200s and 300s overnight no matter what we tried. It’s no fun offering a four year old three quarters of a bagel, or half a serving of his favorite meal, pasta. He was still on injection therapy and I vowed never to go on vacation again without a pump. He was pumping only a couple weeks after we returned from Florida.
So, here we were. 2 years later and about to go on our next real overnight vacation. It started out rough - sooner than I expected it to. Still home, Easter Sunday and he’s 260 2 hours after breakfast - not what I was expecting. I assumed it was the Easter blow pop I let him have with breakfast. Not something we do regularly, but it was Easter after all, and sometimes I feel like I need to show D who is boss. Well it showed me instead - arg. I gave him an aggressive correction, only to be over 300 an hour and a half later. Ok - why would a fast acting blow pop that I bolused him for do this? He must be excited because of the Easter bunny and impending trip. Or maybe it’s the Pod? It’s never the Pod, but I’m not taking any chances. Change the Pod, stiff correction with a meal prebolus and off we go in the truck.
An hour later he’s 143 and ready to eat - no bolus needed, already did that - enjoy. We get to NYC. The show is about to start, he’s 114. Still some bolus in him, I think he might go a little lower since it was such a big bolus, but I let it slide. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious…intermission and he’s 258!!! Ack! Must be excited again because of the show - correction and move on.
And this is how it went…estimate carbs, add some arbitrary amount on to that for the “restaurant” factor and go. Check BG and act. Over and over. Some good, some higher than normal, even a couple of lows caught by checking BG early. Correction. Juice-box. Move on. Exhausting, but not quite as stressful as waiting for NPH to kick it. I felt like we had more control.
So the whole trip - 4 days and 3 nights - I’m excusing all these numbers to excitement, wrong carb estimates, crazy restaurant food, etc. etc. We are back home and experiencing similar highs. It seems this was a basal issue all along!!! Arg, grumble. If only I had the crystal ball to tell me that, we might have had less issues over our vacation.
Regardless, there were very few times that Caleb felt out of sorts because of the highs and lows of D. He was able to eat what he wanted and we weren’t planning our schedule around a strict meal plan. Any highs he had were not sustained and we caught all the lows ahead of time. Although I would have liked to have slept more, in retrospect, I consider the trip a success and another learning experience equipping us for the next one. We are already planning…