Whenever I was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes, i had already been in my high school marching band for over half a year. I decided to stick with it though, and I'm glad I did. I was pretty lucky that there was already annother type-1 kid in the band who has helped me out. She informed me with many good tips. For such exercise as marching around a football field while holding up a 2-pound horn for a straight 10 minutes, she told me I should be around or above 300 blood sugar.
Plus, to make things more complicated, just 3 months after my diagnosis was the band's trip to Florida for spring break. Oh boy, away from all but 4 people (me, the other band kid, her mom, the nurse, none of which were near me at any point) who knew how to handle diabetes after having it for only 3 months was a shocking prospect, but I gave it my all, and never went too high or low during the whole trip. I felt great knowing how well I can handle my disease with mainly just me. Plus, it gave me the opportunity to educate my friends sharing a room with me and my group that I walked with on diabetes. They had already asked some stuff about diabetes at school, but I never had the chance to tell them as much as I did on the trip.
All in all, I am glad that I took the risk of marching with diabetes and have had a good experience so far. Here's to a great 3 more years of marching!!!
Hey - great post!
Thta's awesome you stuck with the marching band after your diagnosis (totally helps to see somebody doing somthing with diabetes when you though you might not be able to, right? Anything is possible!).
So does it work well for you to be up at 300 before an event, as opposed to getting in 15 to 30 grams of carbs right before the event so that instead of spiking up to 300, you'd hopefully use the carbs as you're with the band?
Ginger
if you look at the video of the band performing ( http://www.bhsbandalumni.org/files/EastKentwoodHSInvitationalHigh.mov ) then you'd probably see why my blood sugar needs to be higher for performances. The band at my school is very physical, I'm still waiting for the 7am-11pm every day band camp week coming up later this year to see how well I really have this whole thing down.
It does actually help a great deal to have my blood sugar high at these shows because if it drops during or right after (which is usuall when it does due to the adrenaline rush being over) then it's still high.