Monday, August 15, 2011

So what are YOU doing tonight?


The last thing that I do before going to bed each and every night is check Adele’s blood sugar. She always sleeps through these night time checks. Looking at the result as well as considering the amount of active insulin and prior blood glucose values, I make a decision to either do nothing if the values are “normal” and relatively “stable”, give her an insulin bolus to bring down or prevent a high, reduce basal insulin temporarily to bring up a lower value and/or give her a bit of sugar. She has developed the reflex of eating gummies while sleeping when we put them in her mouth.  Adele doesn't wake up if she goes low during the night, which is very, very dangerous.

I also need to “guesstimate” what time she will be getting up the next morning. Her basal insulin settings are set so that she receives more insulin 1 or 2 hours before waking. This is to prevent the “Dawn phenomenon” (tendancy for blood glucose levels to raise in the morning even without eating) and to give her a “head start” insulin-wise before her breakfast to try to avoid a post-meal high. The tricky part of this is that if she sleeps in, the higher insulin basal rate can cause her to go low. On the weekends, I set the higher basal rates later to avoid this. Sometimes it works like a charm, other times it doesn’t. This is not unusual, it’s just part of the game…

I then set the alarm for the nightly blood glucose check usually around 2 am or sooner if I’m not comfortable with waiting that long. I can then go to sleep.

My wife wakes up for nightly check, tells me what Adele’s blood glucose is and based on where she was at the last check before I went to bed and if she has any active bolused insulin, I tell her what to do (either nothing, insulin bolus to correct a high, lower basal rate and/or gummies to bring up a low) and then we go back to sleep…

And this is every single night… Weekends, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, camping trips, sleep overs... are no different.

Some parents complain about nightly feedings with a new born. Those are only temporary.  Nightly Type 1 gaming activities are for life…

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