Living with Diabetes, (or caring for someone who lives with it) sure does take a lot of work, and it’s easy to be hard on ourselves if we aren’t “perfect”. But today it’s time to give ourselves some much deserved credit. Tell us about one diabetes thing you (or your loved one) does spectacularly!
I definitely never like to toot my own horn that’s for sure. But one thing I think in “D” life that I do pretty decently is being the math portion of Clifford’s pancreas. There are times when he’s lower (not necessarily low, low) but still has Insulin on board (Active insulin still working) well this requires math my friends. His sensitivity is 120 which means for every 1 unit of insulin his blood sugar is lowered on average by 120. So I’ve done the math that is about 12 for every .1 units. If he’s say 79 (like last night) and has 0.4 active, that doesn’t seem too good. However there’s the other part of me that takes into consideration he had white chocolate pretzels for a snack about 40 mins ago and the chocolate likes to come to the party and cause his blood sugar to peek at a much later time than normal foods 
. So Now instead of just doing the math with the 0.4 units active, his blood sugar number you have to take into consideration the chocolate. This means figuring out how many carbs it is going to take to prevent him from dropping low and keep him from going to high. Oy vey it makes my head hurt now! For the most part I don’t do too bad with this I will go with 8 out of 10 times we’re pretty spot on with the guestimates.
This math factor comes into play all day long he was 113 @ 2:30 am. Okay so now I’m sitting here half awake trying to figure out if I give him something to boost him or let him ride. Seeing as between 4 and 5 he “typically” goes higher due to the growth hormone being more active and partying! However in this incident to me it was only 2:30, 3, to 3:30 he tends to dip. Plus his basal is still running at a higher rate between 12 and 3am. So I gave him 3 pixie sticks, which btw only have 15 grams of carbs per seven small sticks, so roughly a little over 2grams each, yes I did this math in my head at 2:30 am. I have to, it’s what keeps him alive. Just shy of 7 grams of carbs kept him riding good until morning! He woke up at 6:15 at 107, but didn’t technically get up till 7am to eat when he was 132!
I like to brag about these “good days” but as you know there are not so good days like the other night. Unfortunately for us I believe it was either a site issue or insulin issue as I changed out the insulin when we changed his site. Either way he’s back to having good #’s.
