BG Report: Three days in Lapland

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(the article below accompanies this video)

When you have to get your rental car from Kirkenes, Norway all the way to Narvik in a couple days, what do you do? Do what I did – plan a quick ‘n’ dirty road trip through northern Scandinavia, a.k.a. Lapland!

We gave ourselves two nights and three days to drive the small, obscure, desolate highways of northern Finland, Sweden, and Norway through some of the most vast and dense forests in the world. I’d always wanted to see this area, and doing so by car was a great way to see it all.

Blood sugars were not super well-behaved, unfortunately. Perhaps a reason was that it was mostly sitting motionless in the car, not hiking or walking around outside enough.

Day 1

It all began at Scandic Hotel in Kirkenes. Our last Norwegian breakfast. My BG before it was 198, a bit too high.

We left Kirkenes and drove the last few kilometers to the Finnish border; crossing over it was simple because there is no longer a border check there. The Finnish countryside was indeed thick with fir trees and little else. I was loving it.

My diabetes wasn’t, though. At about 1:30 pm, before lunch, I was high at 247. Despite my best efforts taking insulin before the in-car picnic in a truly remote area, I was still 227 by the time we got to the hotel in Muonio, a Finnish town right on the Swedish border.

Dinner was as simple as I could make it – some snack-type foods from the little cafe downstairs (our hotel was part restaurant and part gas station). I added a Lapin Kulta beer to mine, since I’d first had one on my first-ever trip outside the US in 1998 and I remember the brand fondly. BG at 10:30 was a bit down, to 184, and I thought that good enough to go to sleep on.

Day 2

Unfortunately, the lack of exercise had more of an effect on me overnight: I was 250 at 8 am. We had breakfast downstairs at the cafe and checked out, immediately crossing over into Sweden down the road and getting a peek at the Swedish version of endless fir trees.

Sweden agreed with my diabetes, at first: by lunch time I was perfect, 97. Lunch was from a place called Arctic Grill in the city of Kiruna – fish and chips and water. This also did me good: I was 135 before dinner.

We’d rented a small house in Björkliden, right beside the great Torneträsk Lake, a little ways from Norway. Dinner was a strange one: Masayo and I decided to take care of all the bits of food we’d accumulated since the trip was coming to an end. We added a couple things from a nearby market, and so beer and Pringles and soup became mainstays of dinner.

This was terrible for my blood sugar: junk food plus now TWO days of not exercising made me an awful 336 before bed. Grumpy, I took several units of Humalog and went to sleep in one of Europe’s most gorgeous spots.

Day 3

The Swedish sleep had been great: I was 119 at 7 am, as we rose early to make sure we had time to cross into Norway, return the car, and catch our train down to Stockholm.

The drive, early on a foggy morning on the road from northern Sweden to Narvik, was stunningly beautiful. I dropped Masayo off at a mall near the train station and drove the car to Hertz to return it. For three weeks it had been our good friend and taken us everywhere. I was sorry to see it go.

I walked back to the mall, and was probably rather low. Not good to walk while already low, but I didn’t know it. I joined Masayo to wait at a cafe. When I checked there, sure enough, I was 49, quite low. I had some glucose and stuff and waited to feel better.

Soon, I did; I was 125, and for the rest of the next two days – the overnight train ride to Stockholm and all day the next day walking around that city, I had no more readings over 200.

Lesson: Lapland is amazing. I mean, really, make-it-a-goal amazing. Other lesson: Road trips without exercise are bad for blood sugar!

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