Insulin and ice cream

Today was one of the first nice days we've had all year. We had an impossibly cold March with temperatures regularly dipping below freezing, and we even had snow. Some parts of the city even had snow the first week of April, so the temperature going up to 15 degrees Celsius today made me want to go out and enjoy it.So I went out to Beacon Hill Park for the first time this year.

I met my friend Jen there, and we stopped by the Beacon Drive-In for ice cream. That was when I realized I'd forgotten to bring my insulin pen with me. One would think that with all the years I've had diabetes, it would be a habit -- leave the apartment, bring insulin pen. Sadly, it is not. I had the ice cream anyway, figuring that the fat content of the ice cream would delay my blood sugar rising long enough for me to go home and take my injection.

Of course, the best-laid plans of mice, men and diabetic people go oft awry, and that was the case in this instance. Jen and I hadn't seen each other in awhile, and we had a lot of catching up to do. So we stayed at the drive-in for quite some time. Then we had a walk to the bus stop, and then I had to stop at the supermarket to buy ingredients for a pasta salad I'm making for a potluck we're having at work tomorrow to mark our last day of work till the fall.

By the time I got home my blood sugar was 17.1 mmol/l (that's 307 mg/dl for the Americans). I decided to delay my supper for a while (since I wasn't hungry anyway) and took a bolus injection of insulin. Two hours later, when I sat down to supper, my blood sugar had come down to a nice, normal 5.5 mmol/l (99 mg/dl). For once I actually managed to calculate my insulin bolus correctly and didn't go too low.

The moral of this story is that while I can eat anything I want as long as I take enough insulin to cover the carbohydrate content, I need to actually have my insulin with me in order to do that. Oh, and also: don't rely on the fat content of a food to keep my blood sugar from rising.