Hi Forum!
If starting below target at mealtime, can I start meal and then inject? I believe I have read something like that here.
I started my meal today and waited 15 minutes to eat. I suppose it depends, too, on what foods I eat. Ugh. Well, I will see what happens.
Thatâs the key - see how your body responds. Just make sure you donât completely forget. Iâve told myself I would wait a certain amount of time (because I was on the low side to start) and didnât remembering until I got a high alertđ« - I give myself a figurative kick, correct and go on.
Thanks @wadawabbit
I am getting âbraverâ and experimenting. I really think I am on honeymoon as I am needing less and less insulin. Less Lantus and now my ratio is 1:30. AND I am having up to 15g carbs snacks with no insulin and only a little spike!
Can season allergies affect sugar??
Congratulations on getting more confident - I knew you had it in you! Iâm envious of your carb ratio - kudos to you!
There is a recent discussion on seasonal allergies - add with most things âT1â you may have to see fit yourself.
As a bit of an aside on that topic (youâll read this there too) I simply took OTC allergy meds growing up - they did a good enough job that I didnât want to commit to shots. A couple of summers ago I developed cough variant asthma: my allergies (which used to make me sneeze and give me runny eyes) started making me cough in a very messy and embarrassing projectile fashion. I was diagnosed with cough variant asthma and have been getting shots for my allergies every since. It might be worth a talk with your team to see if shots would help ward off more serious allergies in the future.
Hi Cathy @HopeFloats2020 I have found I actually do best when I inject insulin after I eat. Every person is different and I think my insulin peaks early in my system. Every time I bolus early before I eat, my blood sugar numbers shoot up with no end in sight. When life isnât chaotic, I scan my Freestyle Libre until I see my numbers begin to move. Then I inject. I agree with Dorie @wadawabbit . Donât forget! One time I got distracted by a poopy diaper and a math lesson. I didnât remember until I was 135!
Thanks @homeschoolingmomof5
My numbers were fine yesterday when I waited to inject at lunch. Nothing dramatic! My life is not very chaotic these days but JUST in case, I leave out a fresh needle for my pen so I know when I go into the bathroom, I still need to injectâŠor I set the timer.
Thatâs a good ideaâŠwatch the numbers and wait til they start to rise.
My allergies arenât too bad at all. Just a bit bothersome.
I just wondered if they could affect the sugar numbers.
I will take a look, thanks.
I donât understand how my ratios are getting larger if Iâm in the honeymoon stage as the cells are continually dying off, er, getting eaten by my other cells, ugh.
The most frustrating thing about the honeymoon stage, I think, is that itâs unpredictable.
As long as you still have some functioning beta cells, sometimes theyâll cooperate and really help keep your sugar where it belongs. Hence the name âhoneymoon,â because your pancreas is still helping, and itâs generally (note âgenerallyâ is very different from âalwaysâ!) easier to stay range.
Our endo told us that after being diagnosed and starting on exogenous insulin, some peopleâs beta cells are like, âyay! The cavalryâs here!â They rest up, benefitting from the outside assist, and then they start working better again (at least sometimes, off and on), which means it takes less insulin to stay in range, and they may need to really cut back to avoid going low a bunch. In fact, some peopleâs beta cells recover so much function that they actually stop needing to inject any insulin for awhile, period.
It can be kind of cruel, because that can make them think it was all a mistake: they donât have diabetes after all, or itâs gone away, and theyâre all better now. But sadly, diabetes doesnât heal itself or go away, and their beta cells do eventually get taken out completely by their misdirected immune system.
The frustrating thing, like I said, is that itâs unpredictable. Some days, or even weeks or months, youâll be using X amount of insulin and itâs working pretty well, and then all of a sudden, it wonât anymore. And of course you wonât be sure at first whether itâs going to be a one-off, discrete event, or whether itâs a trend. So you just have to pay attention, and follow the numbers as best you can. And then itâll change again. And again. And again, and thatâs just life.
Anyway, for us there really was a honeymoon, when it was pretty manageable to keep her BG in range. And after about a year (again, this was just our experienceâ everyoneâs is different), the honeymoon was most definitely over. We started seeing 40s and 400s, which we really never used to see at all, with alarming frequency. With lots of help from the endo and CDE, we found our feet again, but those blissful early days (that didnât seem so blissful to us at the time!) of relatively easy control with relatively small quantities of insulin were gone for good.
So our perspective changed along with our experience. We used to be completely horrified by those 40s or 400s (or 30s or 500s, though thankfully those are still pretty rare!). Nowadays, those readings are obviously not something weâre happy about, but weâre also much less likely to freak out about them. Just like so many awesome posters to this forum always say: theyâre not judgments, theyâre signposts. They let you know where you are, so you can figure out what to do next depending on where you want to be.
@srozelle Yep! I most definitely have a love/donât love relationship with this honeymoon and its unpredictability and on again/off again crap. I am most certainly not holding my breath for the final death of my cells but âenjoyingâ the moments!
Thanks for enlightening me!!
My honeymoon stage led to a t2d diagnosis and total stoppage of insulin injection and a metformin script. That came crashing down about 100 days in when my bg went from 110 when I woke up to 500 after lunch and with no insulin to lower it a trip to the ER on a Sunday afternoon. Please keep a close eye on yourself.
Yikes! You know, the more I hear peopleâs stories, the more I appreciate how much of practicing medicine really is just âpracticing.â And Iâm not throwing stones, either. I donât mean I could do it better. I mean thereâs a lot to know, and so much opportunity to get stuff wrong, itâs astonishing any of us are alive today!
@HopeFloats2020 No it was an misdiagnosis by a Dr who was just interested in moving me along . I was always t1d as later tests proved but the first Dr I saw was not a diabetes specialist and only interested in billing me and seeing the next patient. I am now under the care of a great endo and am very much a part of my own care and spend a great deal of time learning about my medical issues.
@HopeFloats2020
As many others have said, it is about what works for you. Someday this may not work, but if it does right now, live in the moment and experiment a little. Always be brave, not too brave all the time, but take some chances.
I am 18 and have had diabetes for just under 4 years. I was in my honeymoon phase for just under 2 years. It was unpredictable, but I was taking a lot less insulin then too. So, everything about t1d is changing and a little unpredictable. Not trying to scare anyone, just mean that t1d is all about experimentation and learning about your body and what works for you. My doctors recommended many different things for me in terms of lows before meals; if eating less than 30 grams then donât take any insulin. correct first, wait fifteen minutes and then take insulin and eat, etc. None of which made me happy. My blood sugars would jump way up into the high 200s and not come back down, or it would come back down, just low. So, I instead found what worked for me, which is leaving about 10 - 15 grams out of my carb count and so I give enough insulin for almost my whole meal and just enough to bring me up. P.s. I always eat my carbs first in this case and leave less carby foods for the end of the meal. Then I make sure and check once I am done with my meal and it brings it up just enough without going high.
Again, let me be clear, that works for me. It may not work for anyone else, but it works for me and my body. I feel safe with this and that is what really matters. The thing I hate more than anything is going from below range to above range within an hour. I feel like absolute crap and I would much rather experiment to see what works for me in terms of carbs and dosing, highs and lows, and whatever else. You know your body best, you know your food best and your schedule best, so do what feels good for you and your body. If you feel like this is working, then do it. Feel good about experimenting and being brave and becoming braver!!
@fieldiez thanks for sharing! It certainly is a roller coaster living with this. Exhausting some days.