An Ice Cream-Free Heat Wave

It's been HOT here for a week and we're reaching the end of our list of coping mechanisms.  The town pool has gone from refreshing to soupy.  The mall was fun once.  We finished the jigsaw puzzle.  We read entire books during our visit to the library. 

Food-wise, we've grilled and crock-potted.  We've enjoyed salads, partly from our little garden, and we've consumed lots of summer fruits.  The slushie magic I picked up at a steep discount as a site change prize incentive has seen a lot of action.

Frozen fruit bars and even mediocre popsicles made from low-carb gatorade have made refreshing treats.  Yet what would really taste good is a nice cone of ice cream. 

Sadly, that's where we've hit a dead end. My daughter's lactose intolerance has chosen now to flare up.

With good reason, I guess.  We were traveling the weekend before last, and didn't put the pieces together until it was too late.  The day started with cereal with regular milk. Lunch was a bowl of new england clam chowder (her favorite). Dinner was pizza.  Despite the little lactaid tablets, this was too much for her system.  It was way more than the one or two small servings per day she was used to.

The dairy binge was followed by several days of feeling decidedly awful and subsequent days worrying about whether the discomfort had gone away for good.

She went at least a week completely dairy free.  She's since had a sprinkle of cheese on a taco and a couple of other negligible bits of dairy products.  Yet she's (understandably) nervous about trying anything more yet.

So we're sampling treats like sorbet in ice cream cones (really, really sticky), and almond milk smoothies ("whatever you put almond milk in, the whole thing just tastes like almond milk").

I'm not much of a complainer, or dweller on negative things.  But a heat wave without an ice cream cone outing is making me a little sad. 

Since I feel compelled to find a bright side, not dealing with ice-cream's all night blood sugar revenge is a huge plus.  While a sweet sorbet will cause a spike, it gets itself out of the way pretty quickly. 

Cooked Insulin

The patient information sheet which comes with my daughter's Novalog reads, "keep in the refrigerator or at room temperature below 86 F for up to 28 days."

We do just that with vials of insulin at home.  They are in the fridge (butter compartment, of course) until they're needed.  Then they're in a finished room in our basement which is 'site change central' in addition to being part library, part office, part media-room and occasional guest room.  Because it's downstairs, the temperature is pleasant on even the hottest days.

Once the insulin is in the pump, though, it's a whole different story.  Any outdoor time in recent memory has been above 90 degrees.  When she's in the pool, I've brought a cooler to drop the pump into.  Yet I encourage her to plug back in whenever she's out of the water, so again it's hot. The high school, where my daughter spends each morning at her summer music program, is at least 90 degrees at this point.

It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but it's now pretty obvious that by 36-48 hours after each site change, for the past couple of weeks, those numbers have crept up.   The more frequent site changes are not terribly popular here, but it's been the only solution.  Fortunately, it appears that this stretch of heat is over for a few days at least.

The insulin won't be the only one happy about that.