completely new and impatient!

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aliceb

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Type 1
Hey I'm Alice

Iv had all the symptoms for a while now and plucked up the courage to go to the doctors last week. It came back as diabetes type 1. I'm on levimer and novo-rapid now which iv got used to quite quickly but I know I'm being really impatient as no matter how much insulin I'm taking, my sugars go down but seem to keep jumping back to 18.0.. plus I'm too scared to take a lot of insulin cause I really don't want to have a hypo.

any tips or tricks would be a great help as I really don't have a clue with how much insulin to take with food or drink

sorry its a long post!
Thank you 🙂
 
Hi Alice, welcome to the forum 🙂 Are you receiving any help from your diabetes team in adjusting your doses? It's quite common to have quite wide ranging results to begin with so try not to worry too much. It would help a great deal to record what you are eating so that you can link your doses, readings and food together to see if there are any patterns e.g. if your levels go high after eating weetabix for breakfast but not after eating toast then you know that you probably need a different dose for your weetabix. This kind of knowledge will come with experience, but for now just note everything down. It is the carbohydrate content of the food you are mainly interested in, so read the packets and work out the amounts you are consuming from the information provided. You should test your levels before eating and then one or two hours after eating so you can see what effect the meal has on you.

You should ask your doctor what diabetes education courses are available in your area so that you can learn how to match your insulin doses to the food you wish to eat. 🙂
 
Welcome to the forum aliceb 🙂
 
Hey Alice,

Warm welcome to the forum and am positive you will get as much advice and support you need along the way 🙂
 
Hi Alice, well done for going to docs & finding out. The sooner you get started on meds the better. 🙂
 
Hi Alice & welcome.

Did the doctor put you on set doses for the time being?
 
Thanks for all the replies 🙂 I will probably start making a log of what I eat regularly. The nurse put me on a low dose to start with last week but she said to up it by 2 units every couple of days until I get a balance. It's all so very confusing! And does anyone have a substitute for chocolate cravings?
 
aliceb said:
Thanks for all the replies 🙂 I will probably start making a log of what I eat regularly. The nurse put me on a low dose to start with last week but she said to up it by 2 units every couple of days until I get a balance. It's all so very confusing! And does anyone have a substitute for chocolate cravings?
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Erm no, I have chocolate but not a huge amount.
You can eat what you like if you carb count. Did the nurse discuss this with you?

Who is dealing with your care? A consultant or your gp?
 
aliceb said:
Thanks for all the replies 🙂 I will probably start making a log of what I eat regularly. The nurse put me on a low dose to start with last week but she said to up it by 2 units every couple of days until I get a balance. It's all so very confusing! And does anyone have a substitute for chocolate cravings?
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You might find that dark, high cocoa content (e.g. 70%) chocolate is good to relieve cravings - just one or two squares and let it melt on your tongue! 🙂 Or Options chocolate drinks are only about 5g carbs 🙂

In time you will be able to adjust your insulin so that things are less of a problem, although it's always good to keep these things as treats and have them in moderation. Don't, under any circumstances, buy 'diabetic' chocolate! It will send you running to the toilet! 😱
 
Hi Alice

Sounds like you're three steps ahead of your team!

Teaching people to give themselves insulin, spot hypo signs, count carbohydrates etc all at once is often a bit much - and at first they don't know how much insulin you'll need anyway and your body can react massively to even small doses, so best to play it safe and give you very low doses at first which often don't cut the mustard. Things will improve soon enough.

Don't worry for now. You'll have had hi levels for ages and your levels will be better than they were.

In time, as the others have been saying, what they should do is increase your doses until your levels are within target range.

Hopefully they should also teach you to look at what you're about to eat, count the carbohydrate content and know how much insulin to give yourself to successfully 'use' those carbohydrates and not a) leave them dangling about in your blood because you haven't had enough insulin or b) send you hypo because you've had too much.

This way you can go back to eating normally, as long as you carb count and inject.

HOWEVER eating 'normally' and varying doses accordingly is a fairly new way of thinking and not always offered to everyone (some GPs STILL think type ones are never allowed chocolate) so ask your team about it.
 
thanks for all the advice!
My gp isn't really equipt for this as they didn't even know what lancets to give me yesterday even though its on a precription so ill be changing doctors..
and I can't live without chocolate so ill definately be getting the 70% chocolate lol.
also does anyone's sugar levels go up during the night? Every night I get it down between 8-10 then in the morning its about 18 again. Very confusing!
 
aliceb said:
thanks for all the advice!
My gp isn't really equipt for this as they didn't even know what lancets to give me yesterday even though its on a precription so ill be changing doctors..
and I can't live without chocolate so ill definately be getting the 70% chocolate lol.
also does anyone's sugar levels go up during the night? Every night I get it down between 8-10 then in the morning its about 18 again. Very confusing!
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I think that you'll find that the morning increase is usually down to something called the Dawn Phenomenon. It's all down to your helpful liver which has the tendency to dump glucose into the bloodstream if 'it' thinks the blood glucose levels are going too low.

That was one of my first questions when I was diagnosed too!

Actually, I think it catches most people out because the medical types never seem to mention it (probably trying to avoid information overload though).

Andy 🙂

edit: Oh, and welcome to the forum!! 🙂
 
aliceb said:
thanks for all the advice!
My gp isn't really equipt for this as they didn't even know what lancets to give me yesterday even though its on a precription so ill be changing doctors..
and I can't live without chocolate so ill definately be getting the 70% chocolate lol.
also does anyone's sugar levels go up during the night? Every night I get it down between 8-10 then in the morning its about 18 again. Very confusing!
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What insulin are you on? If you are on a slow-acting insulin like lantus or levemir then it sounds like your dose is currently too low if your levels are rising so much in the night. Your liver is constantly producing low levels of glucose to provide your heart and lungs etc. with energy when you are not eating, so this will make your blood sugar levels rise if you do not have enough insulin to match it. I am sure that this will improve though as you increase your doses according to your nurse's instructions.

There is also something called 'Dawn Phenomenon', where your liver gives you an extra boost of glucose once you are up and about which can send your levels high in the morning. It's worth testing as soon as you get up and then again before you eat breakfast to see if this is happeneing to you (assuming you are not currently eating immediately on getting up!) 🙂
 
Oh ok that would make a bit more sense.. the nurse just said last week to keep upping it all by 2-3 units every few days until I see a balance and that was it I haven't heard from anyone since.. I'm on levimer and novo-rapid.. how long did it take to get yours under control?
 
aliceb said:
Oh ok that would make a bit more sense.. the nurse just said last week to keep upping it all by 2-3 units every few days until I see a balance and that was it I haven't heard from anyone since.. I'm on levimer and novo-rapid.. how long did it take to get yours under control?
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It can take a few weeks before you are getting regular, good numbers, but the important thing is to do things slowly so that you don't risk going low - in the night particularly. I was quite lucky as my numbers were brought under control fairly quickly, but people can vary a great deal.

When are you injecting your levemir? Some people find that a single injection doesn't always last the full 24 hours, so end up splitting it into two injections in order to get better coverage. How many units of levemir are you currently injecting?
 
Northerner said:
When are you injecting your levemir? Some people find that a single injection doesn't always last the full 24 hours, so end up splitting it into two injections in order to get better coverage. How many units of levemir are you currently injecting?
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Absolutely agree with that.

One of Levemir's strengths is that it usually works best in two doses so you can tailor it better to suit what your body needs - a bit more overnight and less during the day (or vice versa). Levemir seems to respond more quiclkly to dose changes too which will be a help in future years.

Be aware too that you may be in what is sometimes called the 'honeymoon' period too. Your ailing pancreas can sometimes get a bit of a new lease of life when you start supporting it with injected insulin. How long this lasts will vary from person to person, but it can slightly 'muddy the waters' if you are getting some of your own homemade insulin some of the time.

If you want stability sooner rather than later and are taking the same meal (bolus) doses every day, I'd suggest you try to stick to the same amount of carbohydrate at each of your meals. No way of knowing what that will be except by experimentation, but aim for 'x' grams of carbs at breakfast, 'y' grams at lunch etc and make your meals fit those amounts.

Then look at your BG readings before one meal and before the next to evaluate how that dose has performed. Ideally if the dose is 'right' for the amount of carbs your BG will end up at the same level (most doses will last 4-5 hours which is about the same as the distance between meals).

As an example.

Pre-breakfast: 9.5
Eat: 2x slices of seedy bread toast = 40g carbs
Inject: 4u (or whatever nurse has suggested)

Pre-lunch: 4.5

So... BG dropped quite a lot. 2x slices were not enough carbs for that dose. Try an extra half slice toast the next day.
 
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Great advise I have started this morning to log what I'm eating.

I take 17 levimer at the moment at 10 In the evening but I'll start spreading that to 2 times a day and hopefully that'll make a difference.

Thank you 🙂
 
aliceb said:
Great advise I have started this morning to log what I'm eating.

I take 17 levimer at the moment at 10 In the evening but I'll start spreading that to 2 times a day and hopefully that'll make a difference.

Thank you 🙂
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I would call your DSN and ask her/his advice about how best to do the split. Before you do it I would also suggest setting your alarm for 3 am and testing your blood at that point to find out what is happening to your levels overnight. One reason for a waking high level can be that you have gone too low in the night and your liver has responded by 'dumping' a large amount of glucose in your blood to bring your levels back up again (known as a 'rebound high'). You need to know what is happening before you start adjusting doses or things can start getting confusing. Yes, I know you're impatient! 😉
 
Hi Alice, welcome to the forum 🙂
 
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