Diabetes Wise

Which Way Out of Heartbreak?

This is a difficult post to write, especially on Valentine's Day.

The day after we arrived back from Italy, Rob stayed down in London with me. I had to get up and go to work the following morning. I left Rob in bed, still half asleep, giving him a kiss and a cuddle and reminding him I much I love him.

I didn't know that would be it. The end of the road.

Last Saturday, Rob reached inside my chest, grabbed out my heart and squeezed it until it broke. Or at least he may as well have done. I've been left scrabbling around on the floor, trying to fit the pieces back together.

I spoke to Rob on the phone at two thirty in the morning last Saturday. He told me, as always, how much he loved and missed me, how he couldn't wait to be with me again the next weekend.

Eleven hours later we spoke. He told me again that he loved me but then, like a bolt from the blue, told me that it wasn't enough, that he didn't want to go on with our relationship.

In that second, standing in a hot overcrowded room at a professional conference, my world began to unravel and nothing has been the same the since.

I have no idea what changed in the space of eleven hours. I'm perhaps more scared that nothing did. The love that Rob expressed to me in the middle of the night seemed as genuine and sincere as always. But Rob is a terrible liar, completely unable to hide his true feelings. Real love has no off switch, and I refuse to believe this was a snap decision, he must have already known at half past two what he planned to do when the sun had risen. If he didn't mean it when he told me he loved me then, that leaves only one logical conclusion.

He never has meant it.

The man who made me feel all this. My buddy, my rock, my partner in crime. The person I wanted to share my highs and lows with. The person who understood me and what makes me tick. The guy who was always there, at the end of the phone line, at the end of the train line. The one person who never failed to make me smile, make me laugh, make me love.

Now all he makes me do is cry. All he makes me feel is hurt. In an instant, it's all gone and I'm left wondering if it was ever there in the first place.

I can't find the words to describe how hurt I am, not simply by what has happened, but also the way it was done. Ending a long term, serious relationship over the telephone, even if you are 200 miles apart, just isn't fair. If I meant anything at all, I think he owed it to me to break the news face to face. This is the anger that tempers my tears.

I feel a little like I'm turning in an emotional spin dryer. I can't bear the thought of speaking with Rob, or seeing him again right now. I'm afraid I'd lose my dignity. I'm afraid it would hurt more than I can bear. But at the same time, the thought of never seeing Rob again, of him no longer being a part of my life at all is terrifying.

I'm still not sure that I really know how to get through this, how to find my way out of this heartbreak.

On Monday evening, I went to take my frustrations out on an indoor climbing wall. It's a hobby which, ironically, I took up because Rob loves it so much.

Halfway through a top-roped climb I found myself stuck, unable to figure out my next move, the only logical step for my right foot feeling insurmountable. I looked down, wanting to shout "I can't do it." In that unnatural position, arms and legs spread hanging on to an artificial rock face, I realised that climbing serves as something of a metaphor for life.

You can't look down or backwards. The only way is onwards, upwards, even if you have to push yourself through the pain to do it. You have to trust your belayer not to let you fall like you trust your friends to catch you when life gets tough.

And when you reach the top of an indoor climbing wall, the only way is down.

With heartbreak, the only way is through.

In One Piece... Just

I'm back in England after my week on the Italian slopes, and have finally crawled out from beneath the mountain of dirty ski clothes that needed laundering! Fortunately I'm all in one piece, if only just!

I was pleased to discover that I can still ski, although my leg strength isn't quite what it was prior to my ankle injuries, which has clearly had some effect on my technique and ability. I also earned a reputation as a cautious skier, since fear of further injury dented my confidence somewhat and I wasn't quite as keen as they guys in the group to hurl myself down any old black run at the highest speed possible!

It turns out that caution doesn't always pay, though, as I still managed to have two accidents. On the very first afternoon we set off to ski back down to the village. Unbeknown to me, someone had evidently taped a luminous "Snowboarders aim here" sign to the back of my jacket as I was hit by out of control snowboarders not once, not twice, but THREE times on the way down. The third time, just around the corner from the final drop into Sauze, a snowboarder turned across me and ran straight over my ski tips catapulting me in to the air and tearing my calf muscles. The snowboarder riding the chairlift above heard very clearly what I thought of snowboarders at that point! Thanks to wonderful friends, lots of ice and massage, I was back on the slopes the following morning though.

The second accident occurred on Friday while we were over at the resort of Montgenevre, in France, at the far end of the Milky Way ski area. We'd had a pretty good morning, although we accidentally took a complete beginner down a very steep red run with zero visibility due to a sudden snow storm! This was thanks partly to poor signposting and a crappy piste map - what kind of piste map shows higher areas of the resort nearer the bottom of the map than lower ones?! I skiied that run twice, but then came unstuck on another, probably less difficult, red run just before lunch where I hit unexpected ice and twisted my knee. It took until yesterday for the full glory of the bruising to emerge, so I still managed to ski out the week on Saturday.

On Thursday night we enjoyed dinner at the top of the mountain. We played football in ski boots (as difficult as it sounds) and went bum-boarding, which basically involves sitting on a plastic dish and sliding, down the bottom of the empty pistes, before eating a lovely meal. I elected to indulge in the included wine and so, rather than skiing down to the village in the dark, we rode down on a Skidoo. What I didn't realise was that the Skidoo driver was going to take us straight down the same ski run as the skiers. No quiet track through the woods, but straight down steep Red-11 in the pitch dark with  the snow cannons blowing. All I could do was close my eyes and hang on tight! I have to say this was probably the scariest experience of the whole week, far scarier than standing at the top of any black run and realising the only way is down!

Diabetes-wise it was an interesting week. My blood sugars were fairly well behaved, but there is also lots of CGM data that mimics the mountains and valleys we were surrounded by.

I discovered that the CGM alarms are pretty useless when you are skiing. They would invariably go off when I wasn't easily able to stop and deal with them, progresssively escalating to irritating sirens that distracted me from the skiing. After the first day I turned the high and low alerts right off during the day and simply checked my numbers and trends at the beginning and end of every run. I also discovered that keeping my basal rates the same, but not bolusing for food worked well. I ate a fairly standard breakfast, generally stopped for hot chocolate mid-morning and ate a fairly standard lunch. It's the first time I've tried this approach, so I think the jury will be out until I've experimented a bit more with it.

Another thing I learned this week was that keeping tubes of glucose gel in the cargo-style pockets on the side of my ski trousers wasn't a good idea. At some point I must have fallen one of these, leaving me with a very sticky, messy pocket!

The only other significant diabetes happening was when I'd obviously failed to tuck my tubing back in properly after checking my pump on a chairlift. Somehow the tubing got snagged on the chair as I skied off the lift. It twanged back pretty quickly, but not before dislodging my infusion set. I've now added "the top of a mountain" to the list of odd places I've inserted a new infusion set!

Overall it was a fantastic week, even if our hotel rep was something of a prat, the hotel food was less than gourmet and we had to up ridiculously early for both our outward an return flights. It was wonderful skiing and wonderful company, and good to spend a whole week with Rob. To the right is instructor Luciano who patiently tried to beat my bad habit of turning my upper body out of me, and helped me work on perfecting  proper pole plants, so I'm also definitely a better skier now than I was a week ago. Honestly you've got to envy this guy though - he teaches sailing all summer and skiing all winter...

Can't wait for my next snow fix!