First, there are only 2 days left to put your votes in for the DOC awards. To read more and get all the "poop" as my old boss would say ;) go HERE. The categories are interesting to say the least!
Onto the real reason for this post:
I was running the other day.. (I noticed a lot of my posts start this way). It was Saturday, I was out pounding the pavement for 16km. An hour and forty minutes approximately. I was prepared. I even had water with me for a change. The water was all gone by the time I
was finished so I was quite content with that decision. I was rather very cold on the return part of the run which only emphasizes even more that I need to invest in a warmER pair of running tights. Frozen bums and thighs sort of feel numb. Running with frozen bums and thighs feel awkward and almost painful.
Oh but my bum is not the point of this post though. Can we rely on technology? Can we put our trust, our faith and ultimately our lives in a piece of technology? As a diabetic I certainly do, well I have to. Yes I can live without my insulin pump but I know for certain I wouldn't be where I am today in decent health. My complaint here is about the glucose meters. So I'm out running 16km. How bad do you think I need to know my blood sugar reading on the second half of the run? Pretty bad. I will test more often the longer I'm out. When I put my body under that physical stress for long durations of time (over an hour) is when I need to pay extra attention. Once I've been out longer than an hour it's likely I'll need to put back a GU gel regardless of the temp basal rate and how long it's been running. I will soon be running on empty. Luckily for me on this day however it was a Saturday and so it was morning although I had nothing but coffee for breakfast so I guess I was starting out on empty. Working out in the morning hours I tend to run higher than the evenings where I am always crashing. So that helped, you'll see why.
So on my run, it's cold, it's windy and I'm alone. At my turn-around point Mr.Freestyle decides to crap out on me. Gee thanks a lot. I've had my fair share of meter errors, trust me. I am the type of person that puts my meters through anything and everything. Winter camping trips for one require me to stash my meter in an inside pocket of my clothing to ensure it will work in the cold. I thought that may have been the problem here. I put all the strips I had on me but nope. Er3... Er3... Er3... Er3... I put the meter in my mitten and ran another kilometer after it warmed up and tried again thinking it was maybe a bit cold. I knew it wasn't cold enough to render my meter useless though, there was no way. Nope. didn't work. So here I am running blind. I didn't feel off in any way so I just went with it and was extra careful to pay attention to how I felt should I suddenly go low. Lucky for me I was in range when I got back to my car to test with my other meter. And you wonder why I carry two meters with me?! SHIT! that really pissed me off.
Of course the moment I got back home it worked just fine. Go figure. I looked up what Er3 is and it's for a defective test strip. I put 5 strips in and got it 5 times. When I got home I put those same strips in and it worked. A big line of curse words followed here, trust me.
The point is, how can I not get royally pissed at this F*cking piece of technology that I am FORCED to rely on day in and day out? And when I need it the most, when I'm running long distances as a dia-fucking-betic there is no easy way to say this but I NEED TO KNOW! I need to know.
