traveling with Type 1 diabetes

Travelling with the diabetes beast

I should have written every blood sugar reading down. I should have noted my basal rates going in, and my basal rates leaving. I should have kept tabs on my insulin dosages every time I ate, and the foods and activity that accompanied every dose. I should have, but I didn’t. About two months ago, I suggested Big Ring and I go on a four-day getaway within the two-week break between the end of winter semester and the start of summer semester. I’d been going hard with my studies for nearly two straight years; I needed a break, something to free my mind and refresh me before the attack of yet another summer of chemistry hell, er, I mean, awesomeness 😉 It was between San Francisco or Portland. Initially Big Ring was championing for San Francisco as he’d only previously seen it on a day-trip during our Sonoma County/Levi Leipheimer […]

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Travel woes

I love traveling. I’ve driven across Canada twice, visited several states in the America, have fallen in love with the likes of France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Germany, and nearly every day I am dreaming of new places to discover. However, traveling doesn’t always love me. Clockwise from top: Florence 2009; Bruge 2010; Paris 2007; Barcelona 2009. As a Type 1 diabetic, I need to know carb counts for everything I eat in order to figure out how much insulin to take. At home, it’s fairly easy. I have product bags and boxes and containers with pertinent nutritional information posted. I also have a carb-counting scale that calculates carbs for a whole range of things, fruit, beans, ice cream, pasta, etc. But on the road, those tools are not readily at my fingertips. Evening dessert: 1 apple = 23.35 carbs, which is rounded down to 23 carbs. At 1 unit

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