A TOUGH SWIMMING LEARNING EXPERIEMNT # 1:
all seemed to be going well last night until 1 hour before i was planning on having dinner: i had plummeted to a BG of 46. i drank 1 glass of apple juice (28 gms sugar and carbs) and i waited for my sugars to come back up safely. it took 1 full hour to get them up to 54, so i had a little more juice and waited again. within 1/2 an hour, my Bg was 186. i bolused for dinner.within another hour, my BG had returned again to 45, and i had all this IOB from my dinner bolus. i quickly drank some more juice. this was at 8:30pm. at 9:30, i was still at 45, so i drank 1C 2% milk with 3 Tbs of Ovaltine; a total of 27 gms of carbs with moderate amount of sugars. i turned on an 80% TB and i waited. by 10:45 my BG was up to 89. phew, i felt like i was out of the woods. but, just an hour later, my BG was 180. man-o-man, was i exhausted. not just from my swim, but from all of these BG lows. ugh. anyway, i did a 1 unit correction and went to bed. and i turned off the TB.
i knew i would spike during the night. so, i went to bed with my reading glasses, a syringe and a vial of insulin on my bedside table. sure enough, at 3:30 in the morning, i woke up and tested, only to find that my BG was 348; i did a 5 unit IM correction and went back to sleep.
when i woke up this morning, my BG was 77. phew, back in rangeā¦at least i thought. i wasnt hungry, but i made myself a hearty bfast anyhow. i was shaking, sweating, achingā¦i felt like i had the flu. so i got back into bed and tried to sleep. all i did was roll around and curl up into a ball under my covers. i just couldnt get comfortable. i had the TV on and i kind of dozed in and out of sleep.
lunchtime came, and my BG was 98. i turned on my āPattern Aā basal rate (for non-swimming days) kind of wondering why my BG had risen from the 70sā¦but i bolused for lunch, 40 gms of carbs, waited 15 minutes, and ate. by 4:15 my BG had risen to 156 (WTF???) so i figured i would treat myself as if i did have the flu, and i raised a TB to 110%. i tested again in 1/2 hour, and my BG had risen even more to 185. OMG. i did a correction of 1 unit despite having .5 units OB and i tested again in 1/2 hour, and my BG was 206. at 7pm my BG had come down to 150, so i pre-bolused 25 minutes for dinner (i over-bolused by .5 units) and had just a small 1C bowl of cottage cheese and a decaf with cream. within an hour, my BG was crashing again at 78. i didnt bother correcting, b/c i thought i would let the food time to kick in. but, i did turn off the TB.
now all of this must sound terribly boring to you, but these are the events that have taken place (twice now) after a very hard, fast, strong 1.5 hour swim. clearly, something i am doing is NOT working. eric (of course, it would be eric 
) has several ideas, all of which are about preventing the crash and thus preventing the over-night spike.
now, as you all must know by now, i am always hesitant to try new experiments, but in this instance, my trials have not been working at all, so i am truly up for anything. ANYTHING at ALL!
i wont be in the pool again until monday afternoon, after the weekend. so i have plenty of time to re-coop and refuel, and some time to consider a new post work-out formula. it may not work the first time round, but i will plan on doing some tweaking until i get it rightā¦or at least close to that.
clearly, there are other D athletes out there who have found a solution to this problem. now, as is my nature, i will continue to persevere. i have gotten this far since last year; now there is a new challenge for me to overcome. i will find my way.
counting on and hoping for all of your prayers and open to all of your suggestions!!!
signing off, in all of my frustrations,
DM
.)