Monday, November 25, 2013

Always have a backup plan.

The www.insulindependence.org symposium saturday before last was great and one of the gentlemen (I forgot his name at this time but I will give it to you later, or just go to the link above) had a great discussion about training diabetic athletes.  He said to always have a valid back up plan for your medications.  Then he was talking about how one time a student of his forgot their backup and the good doctors message was "Then you don't do the activity."  I really liked this and preach it to every diabetic I know.  One thing I have had an issue with while training for the philadelphia marathon was that about halfway through my body turns into a turkey in an oven and pops out all my medical devices.  So what I have done is put multiple sites on for my insulin pump.  I also learned some of this with my good buddy Vic who sunday before last sunday finished another ironman.  He is such a beast.  Lucky for me I had both sites in at the finish line and for over 5 hours my BG's were between 130 and 180.  If I just could always run I would be cured!  Back to the moral of the story is not only to have a backup plan but you need to test it as well.  Just like having a spare tire means nothing if you don't know how to jack your car up, a backup diabetes plan needs to be tested and used in a safe control environment.  I would say go somewhere a safe distance from everything and cut the line to your pump and see if you can switch to lantis and humalog injections for an afternoon.  Practice makes us diabetics look perfect so you have to be ready for anything.

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