Does This Meter Make My Snorkel Look Fat?

I'm a few weeks behind, I know I know. But my recent trip to Puerto Rico inspired me to write a short post about traveling with diabetes. Here's the summary: it's a bitch.

First of all, if your insulin gets hot, it goes bad. Which is really convenient if you're going somewhere like, say Puerto Rico. Now granted, most of the time your insulin is living in the well-air conditioned hotel room, so there's nothing to worry about. But that can bring on a host of problems as well. (Flashback to my sophomore year of high school when I left France to go to Amsterdam and realized ALL of my life-saving insulin was packed neatly in the mini fridge of my Paris hotel room... I'll ruin the ending for you- one $250 overnight shipment later, I survived. But barely.)

Perfect segway into the next hassle. The AMOUNT of insulin being used on vacation. Now, I'm FULLY aware that this pain is self-inflicted. But come on people, it's vacation. Whether you're studying abroad in Italy and dining on wine, pasta, and tiramisu every day (ahem, theoretically...) or vacationing in Puerto Rico and sampling every form of mofongo, fried fish, and guava-fruit-anything (once again, theoretically,) the fact is, you're eating differently, and probably much worse than, you eat at home. Cue the insulin pen dial. Crank that sucker up. I'm not here to eat salad.



There's plenty to gripe about in regards to this topic (and I'll most certainly add to this in the future,) but I'll end this post with a third and final hassle. Booze. In this case, rum. When you're on an island where rum is added into every thing you drink whether it's your morning coffee or afternoon fruity drink, handling your blood sugar can be difficult. The ironic part is that you're so drunk you don't notice or care.

That wasn't a joke. Really.

When you start your day off with a 10am tour of the official Bacardi distillery (free samples, what what!) and make it into town 4 hours later with only a strong mojito and 4 mixed drinks in your system, you're not really thinking about your blood sugar. Your thought process is something like, "Heyyyyyy muchachos! Someone give me some paella with something fried and a side of rum with a mini-umbrella. Tengo hambre! What's diabetes? Holla."

 

Why is this a problem you ask? Well, in the long run it's not. When in San Juan do as Pitbull does. Or something like that. But when you're a diabetic even a little bit of alcohol seriously screws with your system, so the short term implications involve a series of too low and too high blood sugars that will crank your hangover up to Dante's 7th layer of hell status.

So moral of the story? Keep your insulin cold, your empanadas hot, and your endocrinologist on speed dial.