Peely66
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Just returned from a holiday to Granada in southern Spain. It was ostensibly a trip with a group of artists of varying levels of ability with the intent to spend some of the time painting and sketching at various locations in this beautiful Andalucian city.
My concern was how I was going to deal with my diabetes in this context. Breakfast was the only meal that had any consistency as it was at a regular time and had the same choice of items, generally bread, cheese, jam, eggs, coffee. I also had the added challenge of coming down with a cold just before setting off which then went on to develop in the first two days. Straight away I could see it was going to be difficult to achieve 70% TIR (which I'm still struggling to achieve at home with very few variables at play) I decided that if I could do 60% I would be fairly happy and that would have to do. I didn't want to ruin my holiday ruminating over what I had got wrong whilst I was away.
At the end of the week I had slipped down to 50% TIR and now I'm home I can look back and think about some of the challenges and see what others on the forum think.
First night there we went to a small local bar and ordered food which took an hour and a half to come which was a bit alarming having bolused with a correction! Maybe the cold kept my levels up as it didn't seem to come down.
After that experience I decided to not pre-bolus and a good job too as on two more occasions the food I ordered never arrived whilst everyone else was tucking into theirs. The second time this happened I spotted someone with Libre at another table and really wanted to go over and ask how the hell she was coping with it all. Of course she may have been Spanish and so not havng to cope with restuarant dining every day but I never got to find out. I had spent 6 months trying to learn some Spanish so that I could cope with some of these situations but discovered that 6 months is a woefully inadequate time spent acquiring a language. I was quite pleased to be able to say "No postre para me". Also after spending the afternoon lying on my bed, having not eaten since breakfast, wandering out to find some sustenance and pointing at a table and saying "es possible aqui?" when I wanted to sit at a table to eat and the waitress asked "Para comer?" and I understood. (Apologies to anyone who speaks better Spanish) That was probably the nicest meal I had and it was vegan.
Reading menus was also an issue but many places have English translations particularly in a city like Granada with a large tourist influx.
So no regular meal times, uncertainty as to how long the food might take to come, illness, heat (30C most of the week) - a perfect storm. I feel far from refreshed after the experience and now begin the long crawl back to 60% and (hopefully) beyond!
My concern was how I was going to deal with my diabetes in this context. Breakfast was the only meal that had any consistency as it was at a regular time and had the same choice of items, generally bread, cheese, jam, eggs, coffee. I also had the added challenge of coming down with a cold just before setting off which then went on to develop in the first two days. Straight away I could see it was going to be difficult to achieve 70% TIR (which I'm still struggling to achieve at home with very few variables at play) I decided that if I could do 60% I would be fairly happy and that would have to do. I didn't want to ruin my holiday ruminating over what I had got wrong whilst I was away.
At the end of the week I had slipped down to 50% TIR and now I'm home I can look back and think about some of the challenges and see what others on the forum think.
First night there we went to a small local bar and ordered food which took an hour and a half to come which was a bit alarming having bolused with a correction! Maybe the cold kept my levels up as it didn't seem to come down.
After that experience I decided to not pre-bolus and a good job too as on two more occasions the food I ordered never arrived whilst everyone else was tucking into theirs. The second time this happened I spotted someone with Libre at another table and really wanted to go over and ask how the hell she was coping with it all. Of course she may have been Spanish and so not havng to cope with restuarant dining every day but I never got to find out. I had spent 6 months trying to learn some Spanish so that I could cope with some of these situations but discovered that 6 months is a woefully inadequate time spent acquiring a language. I was quite pleased to be able to say "No postre para me". Also after spending the afternoon lying on my bed, having not eaten since breakfast, wandering out to find some sustenance and pointing at a table and saying "es possible aqui?" when I wanted to sit at a table to eat and the waitress asked "Para comer?" and I understood. (Apologies to anyone who speaks better Spanish) That was probably the nicest meal I had and it was vegan.
Reading menus was also an issue but many places have English translations particularly in a city like Granada with a large tourist influx.
So no regular meal times, uncertainty as to how long the food might take to come, illness, heat (30C most of the week) - a perfect storm. I feel far from refreshed after the experience and now begin the long crawl back to 60% and (hopefully) beyond!
