Saturday, July 27, 2013

One Third (It's a BIG "Hunk")

In response to "Overkill or Good Diabetes Parenting?"

Store hours?  I wish.

I wish that diabetes management had like store hours or something.  Like maybe Joe's beta cells could "magically" come back to life from 9pm to like 8am.  Ya know?  Like every night Joe's glucometer and insulin pump and CGM could put up a "CLOSED" sign.

Yea...right...



What is 8/24?

I believe it is one third.

I believe it is one third of our 24 hour day.

If it is one third of our day~in~the~life of living with diabetes, guess what?  It is one third of our A1C.  I guess I shouldn't say "our"...it is one third of my child's A1C.  One third is a big hunk of my child's well being.

I am not going to be wishy-washy here.  I am not going to say do what works for you and your family.  I am not going to.   I am going to say that I think night checks are part of managing diabetes.  I don't do night checks solely out of fear of lows and out of fear of the dreadfully named "Dead In Bed Syndrome".  I also do them for trending blood sugars and adjusting basals accordingly.  And.  I do them for correcting highs as well.

It is a third of one's A1C  during a chunk of time that would normally have "predictable activity" (sleeping), with "predictable carbohydrate intake" (not eating, because sleeping), and with, for the most part, a "predictable amount of insulin" (no carb intake, because not eating, because sleeping) on board.

Our nightly routine here is:

Dave checks Joe's blood sugar @ 11pm (the following assumes no IOB and no CGM):
  • If Joe's blood sugar is less than 70, we treat by using the rule of 15s.
  • If Joe's blood sugar is 71-100, we give 8 grams of CHO
  • If Joe's blood sugar is 100-250, we do nothing.
  • If Joe's blood sugar is greater than 250, we correct and then set an alarm to check Joe's blood sugar in 2 hours.
Dave or I checks Joe's blood sugar between 2am and 3am:  We use the same actions as written above.

A day~in~the~life of managing my son, Joe's, blood sugar at night.

4 comments:

Scully said...

I think about that often. the night hours are 1/3 of my health. If i am great the other two thirds of the day and shitty at night, that's enough to give me a crappy A1C.
I do night checks almost every night. Any time Ryan or I has to get up and pee, i test. We often set an alarm... to test. For all the same reasons you listed.
Diabetes doesn't sleep and sometimes when I am sleeping it does maniacally weird shit.

Stephanie said...

I wish we had a plan. I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants every day.

Sorry Joe is having a rough go of it too. ((hugs))

Liz said...

You would think at night we could have at least some consistency! There is truly no "time off" from all this testing.

Mike Hoskins said...

I'm lucky if my blood sugars stay consistent from hour to hour at any given time of day... let alone staying consistent overnight.