Tabletop

My husband and I have started walking more. I mean, I wouldn't really call it walking. I would call this hiking painfully. Basically if the hike looks like it a unique form of agonsing torture caused by severe leg cramps and burning lungs then that's what we're walking.

I have suspicions my husband likes doing this so much as a couples activity because I can't breathe heavily and talk at the same time.

On Sunday we decided that doing death by Tabletop might be a good idea, as we were staying in Toowoomba for my bestie's housewarming.

Tabletop as seen from Picnic Point

Hugh, my bestie & I set off for Tabletop. The trip there was a whole lot of me and my anxiety freaking out about taking my little tiny Micra out on a dirt road to the wilderness*, and my bestie explaining as calmly as you can to someone with irrational phobias that her sisters little Swift did the trip 3 times a week.

We did eventually make it. All of my car tyres didn't spontaneously and simultaneously puncture on the gravel and go flat, so that was a plus.

Tabletop isn't a far walk. It's less than 2km return. It is a bit of a scramble though. You start up a steep little camel hump, get about 5 meters of reprieve, before the path is no longer a path. It becomes a jumble of quite large rocks that you need hands and knees (and in my case, bum) to scramble over. At one point I knocked my cannula, which was in my leg, heavily into a rock as I pulled myself up.

At the end of the camel's hump & the start of actual Tabletop, my BGL was quite comfortably on 13. I was happy with that; having purposefully not given at insulin at breakfast in order to exercise.

We continued the scramble, climbing up a steep path of shale. Rocks that slid underneath your feet as you climbed. This was probably the most exhausting part of the climb up, and probably the only spot we paused to catch our breath.

Looking up at the last climb

Finally, the last part of the hike up was basically a rock wall. I stopped here, not because I didn't have the fitness to go up (it was probably less than 20m to the top), but because I have a massive fear of heights (lots of my anxieties were challenged on Sunday). It was basically a rock face on the edge of a cliff. I'm also prone to fainting when I get really nervous. I made the call that passing out on a near-vertical climb was probably not in my best interests.

A flatter area of shale

My husband and best friend climbed up while I did more BG checks. BG was still good.

We started our climb back down, slowly over the shale, as it slipped even more when you head downhill. Then scrambling back over the camel's hump. About halfway back over the rocks, I spotted a shiny little familiar object in a small gap between the rocks.

A test strip. One that I could identify had come from a Verio meter. Somehow, as my legs ached from pushing up over and over again, I found it comforting to know that one of my kind had been here before me.

With renewed vigor (and feeling spurred on by being able to see the speck that was my car below) I finished the walk. BGL was 10.2.

I would have called it a success. Except for one minor detail. Remember that bump to my cannula earlier? Neither did I. Until an hour later when my pump was alarming 'No Delivery, blocked insulin flow'. A BGL of 23.3 (a 13 point rise in an hour) makes you feel pretty sick.

There's nothing like being physically exhausted with a high BG.

Thanks D, I really owe you one.




*Where the supposed wilderness is probably less than 5km from Toowoomba itself. We definitely could have walked back to civilisation in less than 2 hours. But try telling that to anxious me. Anxious me doesn't listen to reason very well. After all, I think Mt. Coot-tha is in the wilderness, and I managed an amazing panic attack the other day when my husband got us lost in Daisy Hill Reserve (I actually laid down on the dirt path and proclaimed I didn't want to die, and only felt relieved when we came across a sign pointing back to the car park).


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Reason Why I'm Hypo: After correcting that 23.3, I spent between 6 - 8pm hypo with BGLs between 2 - 3. I can't say if it was due to the exercise or the ridiculous heat wave Brisbane has going on right now.