Living Well With Diabetes

I got a first taste of sailboat racing today. It was the first of two days of springtime practice races on the Great Salt Lake. An acquaintance (actually a colleague at the company where my wife works) offered to let me crew on his boat.

It was five hours sailing on a beautifully sunny (albeit chilly) day. Winds were mild at the beginning, but picked up towards the end of the day. I took the helm on the last leg during which we raised the spinnaker. We hit 5.5 knots — the top speed of the day.

I think I learned some things today too. Things like how much there is to learn. I learned some new sailing terminology too. Unfortunately, I couldn’t begin to describe the piece of hardware whose name I learned nor could I describe its purpose. But, that’s OK, I guess because even if I could describe the hardware and its purpose, I couldn’t repeat the term here anyway. It’s, uh, shall we say, a “salty” term. I think I’m really going to like sailing.

Here are some photos from the day:

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It’s been two weeks since my last posting. It’s been a busy two weeks too. I spent last week visiting my parents in Minnesota. Guess what souvenir I brought back from Minnesota? A big, fat head cold. I felt a minor sore throat coming on last Thursday, but that was it and I thought I was going to be lucky. Sunday, it blossomed into a full-blown head cold and yesterday I woke up with a slight fever. Today, I feel stronger and the symptoms seems to be less severe, so I think I’m past the worst of it.

My normal routine in the morning includes taking a blood glucose reading followed shortly by breakfast. When I take that blood glucose reading, I mark (“tag” in the terminology of the glucose meter feature of the Personal Diabetes Manager device that I use to control the activities of my insulin pump) the reading as “Fasting” and “Pre-meal.” This morning, however, with my cold, I decided I needed an additional marker: “Sick day.”

Except it wouldn’t let me do it. I had already set the “Fasting” and “Pre-meal” tags and it wouldn’t let me do a third one. If I cleared “Fasting” or “Pre-meal”, it would then let me set the “Sick day” tag. So, I guess the manufacturer decided for me that I would never need more than two tags. They were almost right because it has taken me two years to notice this limitation. But, in the business of user interfaces, making decisions for the user that are “almost right” is wrong.

On a related subject, when I enter a glucose reading manually, I can’t add tags to the reading at all. I prefer my Breeze2 and Contour meters by Bayer Healthcare so I often enter readings manually and all those readings are tag-free. It’s not that tag-free readings are a big problem for me; the real problem is it seems like an arbitrary and unnecessary limitation.

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Our day of sailing on the Great Salt Lake had been scheduled for this Sunday. The weather forecast for Sunday is beyond dreary and venturing into the abysmal category. I remember from my sailing days when I was much younger that less than ideal weather is OK because it often means stronger winds and therefore better sailing. Well, this forecast barely mentions wind. “Light and variable,” is all it says. Also, Pat’s colleague who agreed to take us out, felt that we deserved weather better than dreary for our first outing. I couldn’t disagree. He is the skipper, after all.

Ironically, the weather forecast for today looks pretty good for a first outing. “Partly sunny, with a high near 53. Southeast wind around 7 mph becoming north.” It looks pretty good for a bike ride too. Maybe I’ll ride my bike out the to marina again.

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A colleague of Pat’s owns a sailboat on the Great Salt Lake. He’s offered to take us out sailing this weekend.

That means I’ve been thinking a lot about two things this week: the weather and staying dry.

Weather-wise, Saturday’s forecast for the Salt Lake City area says it’s going to be partly sunny with a high of 54 degrees. Sounds dry. Sounds like a great day to be outside, right? Well, the weather forecast has changed dramatically each day I’ve checked it since last Friday, so who knows what it’s really going to be like on Saturday. It’s completely out of my control so there’s really little sense in worrying about it. The weather is what it is. End of story.

Staying dry, on the other hand, is something I can worry about and have some control over. I’m not talking about keeping myself dry either. I’m talking about the “stuff” I haul around with me all the time. At various times I’ve jokingly referred to this “stuff” as my “peripherals,” my “vital external organs,” my “diabetes IV”, my “artificial pancreas wannabes”, but whatever the name, it’s the equipment I carry with me for caring for diabetes and, well, to be perfectly honest, to keep me alive. It’s equipment like my blood glucose monitor, continuous glucose monitor, and insulin pump. When the manufacturer of this stuff says it needs to stay dry, I pay attention.

My plan to keep this stuff dry is to package it all individually in dry bags like this one:

Since they’re clear, I should be able to operate the electronics (mostly) without opening the bag and risking exposure to water. These units also have the advantage of coming with a lanyard so I can secure the bag to me, or if that’s not convenient, to the boat. That will reduce the likelihood of the other kind of “oops” that would turn a pleasant day of sailing into an expensive disaster, if not a crisis. That is, in a moment of pure clumsiness, dropping one of these devices into the lake.

We’ll see how well this works. More on the subject of sailing and staying dry next week. I promise there will be photos too.

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