My Froggy Voice and Camp

Camp started this week and as a counsellor, I’m expected to go swimming with the kids at the end of the day. Imagine a giant pool filled with up to 300 kids on any given day.  It looks like a fun time, kids laughing, splashing, passing around a ball, flipping around on the floaty toys.  Now imagine the same pool under a microscope, and the ridiculous amount of germs, bacteria and viruses floating in that water makes that fun, splashing scene seem more like a horror story. 

Thanks to those germs, bacteria and viruses, after only 2 days of swimming in that pool I got sick.  Having a stuffy nose, aching ears, pounding headache and sore throat isn’t exactly ideal when one spends all day cheering with, talking to, and singing with a bunch of 11 year olds, but that’s what I’ve been doing for the past couple of days.  Luckily I’ve been blessed with an amazingly well behaved group of 11 year old girls for this session, and they’ve been fantastic at listening to me despite my cracking, froggy voice.

Not that diabetes is usually a blast, but diabetes combined with sickness can be absolutely brutal.  Yesterday while my campers and I were doing art in an air conditioned room, I felt my body heating up, and after the campers confirmed that indeed it was just me who felt an increase in temperature in the room, I had to test to decipher whether my warm body temperature was from a low or just a mild fever (turns out it was a mild fever, stupid cold is throwing me off my game).  A lot of symptoms of a cold, such as a fever, cold sweats, dizziness, also happen to be symptoms of a low or a high, so I tend to test a lot more when I’m sick (my poor fingers) in order to rule out diabetes related causes. 

One strange thing about my diabetes is that my blood sugars don’t tend to run high when I’m sick which is something many other diabetics experience. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about this additional symptom of a cold, however that’s not to say my blood sugars were perfect this week.  At times when I was doing an activity with the kids and wasn’t able to test, if I felt symptoms of a low I would drink a quick juice, and then test 15 minutes later only to realize that I hadn’t been low, it was just the cold.

Despite being sick, I had an awesome first week of camp and I definitely appreciate that my job for the summer is active because my blood sugars tend to be better when I’m more active.  In time for the weekend, I’ve begun to feel much better and I’m looking forward to my second week of camp, illness-free.