This morning my daughter tested at 40 an hour after eating a breakfast of cereal with almond milk and a slice of turkey sausage. Total carbs was about 40. She had one unit of insulin for it and she tested at 82 before she ate.
What could cause this? We were doing so well the last week. We have been cutting back her Lantus dose at night because she had been waking up in the high 60's and low 70's. She is down to 8 units from a high of 12 when she started out last month.
She felt fine during the low too. Previous lows have caused her heart to race and light headedness.
because she woke up at 82, she may have been on her way down at breakfast. then eating and taking insulin for the food, didn't allow any extra carbs to treat the low (that you didn't know she was having). that's my guess.
lows can be very unpredictable sometimes. the only good way to head off/avoid lows is to test often and look at trends (are you higher than your lastn number, lower, or pretty much the same). actually, diabetes itself is very unpredictable - not just low BGs.
anyway, that would be my guess about what was happening.
I would also guess that she was already heading down, and the 82 you tested her at was mid-drop.
It's also possible that, if it was a high-fiber cereal, you don't need to include the fiber grams in your carb count. For example - if one serving has 40g of carbs, and 5g of fiber, you should figure her insulin based on 35g of carb. (I need to do this when I eat cereal higher in fiber.)
I agree with C and Kim, I went through that alot a couple of years ago. Come to find out my TSH level had recently gone down and I was put on a higher dose of synthroid which my doc said made me more sensitive with my basal rate during the morning just before waking up. I'm not sure how that is linked together. I honestly didn't think to ask, I was just happy the problem was fixed.
Lows are weird and unpredictable. There's a few things I've noticed and/or experienced with them:
Bgl readings can fluctuate up to 20 points from where you actually are, so she might have felt fine because she wasn't fully down to 40. Maybe she had already started to come back up because of the breakfast. She might have been feeling the low when she woke up but didn't realize that's what it was because she was already hungry and groggy.
terry, I am guessing your little girl is recently diagnosed??? if yes - then she is making her own insulin and trying to get a carb ratio correct when you are making your own insulin is very hard. talk to your endo. you might want to try no bolus for meals and checking at +2 hours for a correction only if needed. she could make her own insulin for months.
Yes she is newly diagnosed. Over the past month we have had to keep cutting back on her doses of both Lantus and Humalog. She has not been over
200 at all for the past two weeks but she has been having these lows. This was the lowest. The funny thing is she didn't even notice this time. She normally feels it when she drops into the 50's. We cut the Lantus back again to 7 units last night and will keep doing so gradually until she wakes up around 100.