I Survived the Northern Lights!!!!

Last night I went skiing once again. And this time I successfully made it around the Northern Lights trail and back to the chalet without going low!!!!!

Last week I went out and tried the suggestions from this post I made three years ago: 25% bolus at dinner, then 25% basal while skiing. Unfortunately I still went low. But while watching how my glucose behaved during and after skiing, I hypothesized that the problem was simple: we went out skiing too soon after dinner. So this time, I made a point of eating earlier and going skiing later, giving my insulin and glucose a chance to regulate itself.

Before we left for Kamview, I did glucose and was 11.8 mmol/L. I thought that was going in the right direction so we left. Unfortunately by the time we got to Kamview, my glucose magically dropped to 9.1 (even though this was maybe 15 minutes later). Dismayed, I drank some regular pop and ate one peanut butter cookie (something with more staying power than the pop), then off we went.

I stopped right before the Northern Lights trail begins to do glucose again. At this point I had been experiencing a drop in glucose and would be hovering just over 4.0 mmol/L. This time I was 9.5! I was super excited - somehow my glucose had managed to hold steady!

After skiing the Northern Lights, I stopped and did glucose once again. This time it had dropped a bit to 8.4 mmol/L, but for all intents and purposes it was still holding relatively steady! So I skied back to the Chalet without any problems (and without having to eat anything more!) At the end of the ski, I did glucose and was 8.8 mmol/L. I had successfully skied the Northern Lights trail without going low!!!!!

I stopped the remaining 25% basal at that point (I had set it to 25% for 3 hours at about 6:45pm; it had 45 minutes left to go when I stopped it). About an hour later I did glucose and was now 16.8 mmol/L. I need to find a way to deal with that increase (and to stop it from happening), but it really wasn't as bad as two weeks ago when I went from about 5 mmol/L to 20 in an hour. But that's something to deal with next time. For now, I'm just excited to be able to ski (and hopeful that this will help me bike come summer)!