November 29, 2005

Numbers

Results of fasting tests:

7:15 130
8:45 152
9:45 180
10:45 161
11:45 180
12:45 163
1:45 164 (broke down and ate enormous bowl of oatmeal)

Analysis:

1. Why didn't I do the tests on the hour so they match the way Nellie's clock works for basal delivery? Gooberhead.

2. I seem to be scaling up between 7:15 and 9:45, then more or less leveling off.

3. On the other hand, you could look at 7:15-1:45 and observe a 34-point shift, not that much overall. I'm too anal to settle for that, though. I was at 180! 180 is not a happy number! (Of course, meters vary so much that who knows what my BG ever really is...)

4. Back to #2 then. For simplicity, let's say I'm rising between 7 and 10 a.m.

5. It takes 2 hours for a basal change to take effect. So I need to bump my basal between 5 and 8 a.m.

6. Actually, what I really need to do is repeat the whole process one more time to be sure today wasn't an aberration. But I've watched the BG drift upward for a week (though I wasn't fasting) and therefore feel pretty confident about making a small change.

7. Small changes are safest. So I'll try increasing .05 units per hour during this span. I'll tell Nellie to bump me to .60 units per hour. A new record basal rate for Violet, woo hoo!

1 comment:

  1. Just about to start my pumping after 46 years of struggling along with all of the same things you all are describing. No more estrogen, thank goodness. Yes, it did add another influence on my blood sugars. Other factors are acute stress (fight or flight as it were) caused by illness, social situations, fright and high blood sugar which causes insulin resistance in me. No beta cells left in me, gone long ago of course. I test & take a corrective injection every 3-5 hours.

    I can see two possibilities for unexplained morning high numbers. Each morning between 7&9 I get a "dawn effect" boost of around 150 points, for which I must take 2-3 units of Novolog.

    Re: lows at work...I taught school for 25 years always with a tube of glucose tabs in my pocket and you should always have them with you, especially on a pump!

    Now I find another factor in unexplained highs... gastroparesis. Nerve damage to stomach. Food moves through and shows up as blood sugar in an unpredictable manner. A new chapter in the guessing game which can be limited or partially avoided by keeping good levels.

    Thanks Violet for your honest blog and all of the rest of you too. I will be reading regularly to get ideas from you all.

    My daughters, used to my openly discussing and dealing with it all---call me:
    Not just a DIABETIC, just a mom with diabetes.

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