The COVID-19 diaries: inside exercise

This is a comic from Sunday – as you can see I’m running a little behind myself – and it was truly a phenomenon when the sun came out at about 3.30pm. Everybody took to the streets. I am normally a neighbourhood walker. I like the calm walking brings me, but I have never seen so many people walking in this suburb. It was like a freaky carnival where everyone kept their distance, walked along the middle of the road, and all the bands and hot chip and waffle caravans had cancelled. There were little groups yelling at each other – I ran into about three people I knew. It was both festive and eery, like we were all infected already and were compelled to walk to our deaths. It did strike me how truly car-centric so many of us are!

COVD-19 adds an extra layer of anxiety to diabetes management. After all, it’s one of those underlying conditions that ups your chances of dying of it. I like to tell myself that I will be exempt because my sugar levels are reasonably well-controlled but some days it’s really hard and my sugars start rising for no good reason and the weather means I can’t go do a vigorous 30 minute walk that generally guarantees that my insulin will start taking effect again.

I have this really great testing app on my phone that scans a sensor in my arm. It’s not funded (I hope it will be soon!) and it’s quite expensive at $50 a week – but it does mean that I don’t need to prick my fingers and it constantly graphs my results. This is stressful in itself – I feel a sense of satisfaction when my sugars are 91% in target, but when they slip back to 32% thanks to a shitty day of highs and lows I feel like a complete failure and the anxiety kicks in. The trick is to get good nighttime levels – that way you’ve got at least 30% of your day within range.

I did make myself a really great dance playlist thanks for a bit of crowd sourcing! Happy to take more suggestions though. What tunes make you want to get up and dance?