Travel fun

Well, I'm finally back after our annual trip to Tahoe for a conference. This year, we decided to take advantage of living in Seattle and drive, since we hate to fly and we need to take a lot of stuff with us. Driving did make things hugely better, but our car broke down in Yreka. So we lost the extra day we would have spent picking up supplies and getting things settled. I'm sure Tahoe is a wonderful place if you're not there for a conference. Every year, we go there and every year we don't have time to do anything else. Sometimes we even miss the small window in which stores and restaurants are open -- if you go, don't do that! It was nice to see people, albeit briefly, though.

Since I've travelled by car before, I knew I would probably need more insulin. Last year, I needed about 8% more. This year, I needed 40% more every day that we were in the car. I'm not joking! I was really conservative about it the first day and spent a good part of it over 200. Once I'd gotten up to 40% and stuck to it, everything was fine. I had read that a lot of people needed less insulin at high altitudes, so I went back to my normal insulin amount once we got to Tahoe. Actually, I needed 30% more on the first day (for other reasons) and 20% more after that. When we got back in the car to drive back, I went back to 40% and it worked out great. On the one hand, there were some really crappy days in there. On the other hand, I managed to figure it out and the last 3-4 days everything went really well. My housemate had about the same experience - he needed tons more insulin in the car and some more in Tahoe. He told me that 40% was ridiculous and couldn't be right, but I guess I think that until he keeps track of his own insulin intake and proves to me it's not 40% more, he can stfu. ;)

There was one day where everything seemed to go wrong: our first day in Tahoe. In the morning, I had settled on 20% and everything was going fine, but by afternoon I kept taking insulin and it seemed to have no effect. I was pretty sure my insulin wasn't bad and my set looked okay. I did have a low a couple hours before dinner, so I ate 28g of chips (low fat) and then bolused for most of it. When I sat down to eat dinner, I was at 171. Wait, what? I bolused for dinner even though we hadn't ordered yet - about 10 units. I checked again about 40 minutes later and I was at 220. I still hadn't eaten anything yet. I can assure you that I wouldn't see a rise from eating chips after more than two hours, so I was completely puzzled. We ate dinner and hurried back to the hotel because we were supposed to be somewhere. When I pulled my set, guess what happened? About 12 units of insulin came pouring out! This was only the third day for it, and normally I change after two because it's a needle set, but tunnelling never happened to me before. Once I'd changed it, everything was back to "normal."

The best part is that I have an endo appointment tomorrow! Heh. I wish all of you less "interesting" trips.