This coming week will most likely be the most challenging, starting tonight actually. I will be doing a basal test. Basal insulin is my long acting insulin that I have been taking twice a day, to keep my sugar at an even keel. A basal test requires fasting and last time I checked no person likes fasting. Dinner tonight will be my last meal until tomorrow night. I will continue to take my long acting insulin and will have to check my blood sugar every 2 hours to try to determine any type of pattern that is occurring.
The biggest thing I am hoping to accomplish from this is to determine when my "dawn phenomenon" is starting to occur and that lovely hormone, cortisol, is destroying my blood sugar. This test will also help me determine if my basal insulin dosages are even close to correct. However, if my blood sugar drops during this time period, it's abort mission and I will have to start all over another day (yuck).
This week I will unfortunately be eliminating my delicious Starbucks coffee, which I indulge in each morning straight from our Keurig brewer. Caffeine is another substance that changes blood sugar, so I am doing my best to eliminate any possible offenders.
Besides my basal testing, I am considering a few other guinea pig experiments on myself. One of which will include Symlin, a medication to help with my stomach emptying, satiety and post meal blood glucose spikes, because on top of not producing insulin, I also lack the ability to produce amlyin. When your body destroys the beta cells in your pancreas all kinds of fun things happen!! NOT! I have tried Symlin before, when I was on the insulin pump and I never really stuck with it. Partially due to the fact that for the first month, you practically want to throw up for 6 hours out of the day and it takes all my energy to move from the couch. Joy! It seems if I can get over that, one day pregnancy morning sickness shouldn't phase me right?!?! However, if I can get past the weeks of adjustment and past the puke phase, this stuff might just work.
For those of you out there keeping track this will increase my daily number of injections...what's another 3 needle jabs when you're already doing 6-9? Yes, this year for Halloween I will appropriately dress up as a pincushion!
Well, thanks for dropping by and keeping up with my crazy rollercoaster!
Update soon,
D
Good to read about your pump vacation. Casey went on one last summer. You really learn a lot by going back to MDI sometimes.
ReplyDeleteHope to see you at a T1DE.org meeting soon. Great place to share info on different treatment options.
Brian Vandegrift
JDRF mentor