Best Not to Travel Alone

For most of my adult life, I have traveled alone--to China and on many camping trips to remote areas throughout the U.S. and Canada. I always felt I could handle whatever came up--until now.

I was poised to take my very first camping trip since beginning dialysis. My truck is packed, and all is ready for an early-morning departure. All, that is, except my body.

About an hour ago, paramedics were here. This is at least the seventh time they've been at this apartment since I moved in last July. Most people have maybe one paramedic visit at the end of their life. I am averaging almost one a month.

I had checked my blood sugar at 4 p.m., and it was a bit high--233--so I took the amount of insulin my pump recommended. Two hours later I had lost consciousness. Thank goodness Aaron had come home, found me disorientated, and called 911. The paramedics measured my blood sugar as 35, a dangerously low level, and administered an IV of glucose. This brought my level up to 331, a swing in the other direction.

After they left, I had about 60 carbs and was going to take the appropriate amount of insulin to cover this, but my blood sugar was only 110. I couldn't understand this, so I used another glucometer to retest. This time I got 107. Close enough. How could it be that I had had glucose through an IV and then had a meal but my blood sugar was perfect without insulin?

It used to be that I could call Mary Kay, the diabetic nurse, and ask her advice after hours, but that is no longer the case. No one is available to handle diabetic questions after 5 p.m. and before 9 a.m. or on the weekends or when Mary Kay is on vacation. This is truly a case of penny wise and pound foolish. The cost of having a diabetic nurse on call 24/7 is far less than that of ER visits, ambulance rides, hospitalizations, and the dire consequences of extremely low blood sugar. But that's the way it is now, so I just have to muddle through, not knowing what to do, until tomorrow morning.

I always feel beat up and hung over after such a dip in blood sugar. It frankly gives me pause to think that this might have occurred when I was alone with Rasputin at some out-of-the-way, sparsely populated, off-season campground. Knowing that untreated low blood sugar can easily result in death, I've decided to forego the camping trip, at least until I understand what is going on with my insulin requirements.

Camping while on dialysis was something I really wanted to do, not just because I love getting away from the city, but because so very few dialysis patients travel at all, much less camp. Camping always gave me so much joy and brought so much adventure, wonder, and beauty into my life. I wanted to feel that freedom again. I wanted to go camping to say to dialysis, "You're not going to restrict me. I'll show you."

Sure, camping on dialysis would be a royal hassle. Since I wouldn't have electricity, I'd have to do four manual exchanges per day. One upon waking, the second at 1 p.m., the third at 5, and the last before bed. Two liters each, the drain bag placed on the floor of my truck and the solution bag on my dashboard so that gravity would feed the fluid into my peritoneum. A lot of hassle, but I knew it would be doable.

In the end, it's not dialysis that has prevented this trip, but diabetes, the root cause of the kidney failure.