English Please

I commented on Facebook earlier that my blood sugar was 99 with 4 units active insulin and a comment that my correction rate is 1 to 25 and someone said "English please" so here you go:

I have something called diabetes, there are two kinds, 1 and 2. I don't know much about Type 2 but I can tell you that my type is 1 and there currently is NO CURE! There are TONS of medical advancements and diabetes is a lot easier to manage today than even 10 years ago. People with type 1 diabetes are completely capable of living a normal long life if they manage things to the best of their ability. You'll see I say "to the best of their ability" because there are lots of outside influences that make your numbers vary. Today I volunteered and did some painting, I was up and down a ladder and doing physical activity, this activity caused my blood sugar to go low.

So the first comment, how's it work:

Basal and Bolus. Basal is your background insulin, your pancreas constantly monitors your blood sugar by secreting little bursts throughout the day, my pancreas doesn't do this, my pump does. The doctors help monitor my blood sugar by me writing all the stuff I eat and activity I do and help me come up with a Basal Rate. Different times of day can have different basal rates, currently I have the following basal rates:

1) 12:00am 1.35
2) 3:00am 1.45
3) 8:00am 1.05
4) 12:00pm 1.15
5) 10:00pm 1.35

Total intake for basal in a day is 29.7 Units of Insulin

Next is your bolus rate, bolus is the amount of carbs you eat, I have two bolus rates depending on the time of day, those are 1 unit of insulin to 7 carbs or 1 unit to 8.7 carbs. If you take a look at the nutrition label of your cereal you'll see something like 43g Carb per serving. For me this means 43 divided by 7 or 8.7 = 6.14 or 4.94 depending on the time of day. If I were on injections I'd have to decide if I wanted to take 6 or 5 units because you really can't gauge a half or quarter unit in the syringe. With the pump I just tell my pump what I'm eating and it knows the time of day and what my bolus rate is and calculates how much insulin I need all on its own.

For dinner tonight I told it I was going to eat 72 Carbs of which was a guess because it was a banana(usually 30g Carb) and strawberries(i didn't look up but guessed at 40 and probably was that which was my mistake) Later I had popcorn and the label says 18g Carb per serving but 2.5 servings per bag so I did a bolus at 45g Carb

My blood sugar at dinner was 305 and my correction rate is 1 to 25 so I took 8 units as a correction and 7.2 to cover my food. With out testing I ate the popcorn and did the bolus for it. Could be one of the reasons I am thinking I'll go low later but some other things to take into consideration.

Lets say I eat something like jolly ranchers and I take a shot to cover for that. Chances are I'll go high because the jolly ranchers will quickly absorb into my body and blood stream but the life of the insulin is longer so I'll be high for a few hours. On the flip side, lets say I do something like eat pizza. Pizza has cheese, cheese is fat, fat slows down the absorbsion of carbs into the body so I may go low early but then high later because I'll have to eat something to cover the low. You can program your pump to give you part of the insulin now and the rest of it later, the problem for me is I'm new to the pump and its still a big game of guessing right how to set those different timing ratio's.

Maybe the next post we'll talk about temp basals and that game. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.