I love reading of others experiences of D, in fact its more that I need to read of them. It shows me that, rather than our life being no longer normal, we just have a new type of normal.....
At the start of my blogging adventure I posted pretty regularly, now its not nearly as often as I'd like, so I admire people who can post regularly, especially on a daily or almost daily basis for Diabetes Awareness in November.
The difficulty? Trying to keep up with all these stories; my google reader has been creeping up and up over the last month, its been hovering around 250 unread posts this week even tho i'm reading many many posts daily.
So, what do you do when you cant get back to sleep after a 5am sugar check - play catch up big time.......yep i'm getting through them slowly but surely. It also allows me a few minutes to post for the first time in a while.
And whats super great? That 5am check gave a reading of 7.2 (130), after a string of lows over the last few nights its good to see a safe number.
Lets get swagging
K's insulin needs have been dropping over the last few months and we seem to be revising downwards on the daily dose all the time. I've gone over the figures and her daily use has gone from c.30-34 units during the summer (fast & slow acting) to c.22-23 units at the mo' - a huge difference. I'm going to try & compare control of highs and lows, but we've noticed that when we try our utmost to avoid lows we also get fewer highs (avoiding rebounds and all that). I was very dubious when, in reading off a string of highs to the hospital earlier on this year they insisted on reducing insulin to avoid the odd low, but hats off to them they were right.....
Other things that affected insulinuse over the last while was that K took a growth spurt in summer (thanks to the DOC for putting our minds at ease when we saw some crazy highs). I'm sure there is also a seasonal factor, and the fact that K is in school and all the after scholl activities are on at present, but I wish it was easier to put all this into a programme that spat out a suggested next dosage (we're still on Multiple Injections). I suppose I just wish there was a more scientific way to control sugars than what is basically swagging on a daily basis.
Parent Teacher Meeting
We had K's parent teacher meeting this week. She is doing really well across the board and we're very proud of her. But what i was also chuffed about was that D was never raised by the teacher at all, even when she mentioned K sometimes loses focus in class (this is definitly not a symptom of D, just that K is happy to be distracted by pretty much anything else that is going on rather than the work in front of her).
I had to raise D at the end (I just wanted to make sure teach was comfortable with same). Teach talked of D like it was just a tiny part of the equation, barely worth discussing (which is how it should be). She mentioned that she was nervous at first (werent we all) but that K is minding herself really well and goes about sugar checks in a fairly unobtrusive way. She went through the emergency pack (spare tester kit, glucogel, gluco tabs and digestive biccies for slow release after a low). All in all great stuff.
In other November news i did manage to complete the dublin marathon at the start of the month on behalf of the Diabetes Federation of Ireland, so i was pleased with that.
At the start of my blogging adventure I posted pretty regularly, now its not nearly as often as I'd like, so I admire people who can post regularly, especially on a daily or almost daily basis for Diabetes Awareness in November.
The difficulty? Trying to keep up with all these stories; my google reader has been creeping up and up over the last month, its been hovering around 250 unread posts this week even tho i'm reading many many posts daily.
So, what do you do when you cant get back to sleep after a 5am sugar check - play catch up big time.......yep i'm getting through them slowly but surely. It also allows me a few minutes to post for the first time in a while.
And whats super great? That 5am check gave a reading of 7.2 (130), after a string of lows over the last few nights its good to see a safe number.
Lets get swagging
K's insulin needs have been dropping over the last few months and we seem to be revising downwards on the daily dose all the time. I've gone over the figures and her daily use has gone from c.30-34 units during the summer (fast & slow acting) to c.22-23 units at the mo' - a huge difference. I'm going to try & compare control of highs and lows, but we've noticed that when we try our utmost to avoid lows we also get fewer highs (avoiding rebounds and all that). I was very dubious when, in reading off a string of highs to the hospital earlier on this year they insisted on reducing insulin to avoid the odd low, but hats off to them they were right.....
Other things that affected insulinuse over the last while was that K took a growth spurt in summer (thanks to the DOC for putting our minds at ease when we saw some crazy highs). I'm sure there is also a seasonal factor, and the fact that K is in school and all the after scholl activities are on at present, but I wish it was easier to put all this into a programme that spat out a suggested next dosage (we're still on Multiple Injections). I suppose I just wish there was a more scientific way to control sugars than what is basically swagging on a daily basis.
Parent Teacher Meeting
We had K's parent teacher meeting this week. She is doing really well across the board and we're very proud of her. But what i was also chuffed about was that D was never raised by the teacher at all, even when she mentioned K sometimes loses focus in class (this is definitly not a symptom of D, just that K is happy to be distracted by pretty much anything else that is going on rather than the work in front of her).
I had to raise D at the end (I just wanted to make sure teach was comfortable with same). Teach talked of D like it was just a tiny part of the equation, barely worth discussing (which is how it should be). She mentioned that she was nervous at first (werent we all) but that K is minding herself really well and goes about sugar checks in a fairly unobtrusive way. She went through the emergency pack (spare tester kit, glucogel, gluco tabs and digestive biccies for slow release after a low). All in all great stuff.
In other November news i did manage to complete the dublin marathon at the start of the month on behalf of the Diabetes Federation of Ireland, so i was pleased with that.
Ah, yes, the wee hours catch up...gotta love it!
ReplyDeleteI tend to do that when I'm trying to stay awake for a retest after treating a low.
Love that D is seen as a tiny issue at school. So the way it should be so K can focus (or at least try!) on school things.
We found the same thing when school started...WAY less insulin needed.
I recently was diagnosed with type 1 and i really appreciate your blogs...thx
ReplyDeletecongrats on completing the marathon! :)
ReplyDeleteglad to see your name pop up in my reader. thanks for the updates, glad to see things are settling in.
(ps my heart was in dublin last night for the mic christopher gig at vicar st.)