BG Report: Kōbe Dentetsu’s Ao train line
Day on a charming but struggling mountain train • Ao Line
Watch on YouTube (31:32)
Today’s blood sugars, before I got on the Ao Line train in northern Kōbe, Japan, started pretty rough.
Last night I was around 110 when I went to sleep. But it then slowly rose for some unknown reason. At 3 am I was awoken by a high alarm from my FreeStyle Libre 2 reader. And again at 5:45 and at 6:30.
My high alarm is set at 220. For those last two times, I took two units of Humalog each.
Part of my hotel breakfast. Eight units of Humalog seems like a bit much, doesn’t it?
When I woke up for breakfast at 7:30 I was better – 161. My hotel in Kōbe had an excellent buffet, and I took a further eight units of Humalog on top of the previous four, because I was having some granola and a few pastries and potatoes with my meal.
I got kind of freaked out that I’d taken too much, so I had another couple of small pastries, then checked out and hit the rails.
For the next several hours I was ok. The breakfast spike maxed out at 194. I was alternately walking (some reasonable distances, over often-hilly terrain) and riding the train. So, it was a fairly active day.
When I had lunch on a bench near Ebisu station, I was down to 127. I took only two units for that lunch – normally about a 6-unit meal – because I was going to be walking a couple of kilometers right afterward. That usually means I need a lot less insulin at midday.
It wasn’t enough. Two hours later I was 251, then 274. The two units were vastly inadequate. It was annoying because sometimes, that is the right dose for me. Not this time. And of course, I don’t really know why.
On a JR train back to Ōsaka, I bought a hot coffee from a platform vending machine, took four units of Humalog, and had a small chocolate snack I had with me.
That fixed it, but then I blew up again to the mid-200s after dinner. But that’s another story. Sigh.
