April 14, 2022
“BG” stands for Blood Glucose — and Beer Garden! A dinner at the latter made for a tricky night with the former.
I started the day by bolusing 3 units with breakfast because I knew I was not going to take a morning walk. That brought my BG curve down to about 120 mg/dl, and it gradually declined until early afternoon when I had something as a light light lunch. I think it was peanut butter. Because lunch was not carb-heavy, I reasoned I could either slip out for a walk or I could bolus, but I did neither. My BG level rose gradually from there until it was time to make dinner for the family.
I decided to bolus then because my BG level was high already and I was snacking on the the ingredients I was using to make dinner. That was about 4:30-5:00 pm. The level dropped slightly, not much. I then went out to meet a friend for dinner at a beer garden. I knew I was going to have a beer and a bun, so I preemptively bolused 6 units, and then ordered. I could do that because my levels after prepping dinner were still pretty high, like in the ~150’s.
Six units carried me through a carb-heavy dinner for just about the anticipated three hours. Then around 9:30 pm, the three hour window for fast-acting insulin closed while my digestive system continued to pump glucose into my bloodstream from the beer and bun. At about 190 mg/dl, I jumped on my elliptical machine to seek to bring the level back down.
Often when I exercise for more than 30 minutes, my BG levels drop into the 70’s, and then I’m left trying to avoid a crash. It will often for-shorten my workout session. Last night, the extra carbs in the system kept my levels high at about 120, even after an hour-long workout.
After stretching, I looked at my level and strategized how I might respond with insulin. I knew I had consumed much of the BG in my bloodstream and I was not likely to still be digesting. So I settled on 1.5 units of fast-acting and 4 units of long acting at 2:30 am. (I really need to sleep more because sleep probably has a huge impact on my glucose control.)
As I turned out the light, I saw that my level had risen to 144 mg/dl. I just had to roll my eyes. “Well, I hope I’m not having some crazy spike, but if I am, it’s not the end of the world,” I had to say to myself. Then I went to sleep.
Overnight the operating system on my phone updated, so there is a gap in the data. What I found, however, was that in that window, my BG levels plummeted to about 70 mg/dl. So, it was a good thing that I did not panic when I saw the level climb to 144 mg/dl. In the end, I woke at about 98 mg/dl, which is pretty much my ideal target.
Takeaways:
- Knowing myself well enough to know that I probably didn’t have a lot of carbs in my system after an hour long workout, I chose a conservative dosage of overnight insulin.
- Knowing that I was going to eat a carb-heavy dinner, I bolused a large amount by my personal standard (6 units), but then had to be aware of the fact that I would continue digesting after the 3 hour window closed. I could have bolused a second dose of post-dinner insulin at 10:30 pm. Because I was able to exercise, I did that instead and used my high BG level as a buffer to allow me to have a longer workout session.