Newly diagnosed, going back to work

[RayMathers]

Hi, I'm recently Type 1 and will be going back to work next week, after 3 weeks sick leave. I've been on this forum a few weeks ago and had some good feedback.

My question is about eating during work hours, my working hours are 8am - 5pm, lunch 12:00- 12:45.
My breakfast will be about 7am , which means 5 hours before lunch, then in the afternoon I will not get home until nearly 6pm and dinner would be around 7 - 7:30pm. I'm not driving yet but hope to do so in the next few weeks when my eyesight is better. ( I will be testing before I drive to and from work to make sure it is more than 5)

What snacks or eating routing can I do during the mornings and afternoons to help with hunger and also prevent hypos? I will inject at breakfast, lunch and dinner times. I'm currently testing 4 times a day. my BG are ok now, in the 5-8 range most days. When I was previously at work my breakfast was not enough and I was always eating mid morning.

Could I eat, for example a banana and/or low carb nutty bar mid afternoon, it would only be 10-15 carbs.
I'm going to get a mini fridge for under my desk to keep food.

Any suggestions would be welcome. I'm not a fan of nuts but I'l told they are good.

Ray

 

[SB2015]

Hi, I'm recently Type 1 and will be going back to work next week, after 3 weeks sick leave. I've been on this forum a few weeks ago and had some good feedback.

My question is about eating during work hours, my working hours are 8am - 5pm, lunch 12:00- 12:45.
My breakfast will be about 7am , which means 5 hours before lunch, then in the afternoon I will not get home until nearly 6pm and dinner would be around 7 - 7:30pm. I'm not driving yet but hope to do so in the next few weeks when my eyesight is better. ( I will be testing before I drive to and from work to make sure it is more than 5)

What snacks or eating routing can I do during the mornings and afternoons to help with hunger and also prevent hypos? I will inject at breakfast, lunch and dinner times. I'm currently testing 4 times a day. my BG are ok now, in the 5-8 range most days. When I was previously at work my breakfast was not enough and I was always eating mid morning.

Could I eat, for example a banana and/or low carb nutty bar mid afternoon, it would only be 10-15 carbs.
I'm going to get a mini fridge for under my desk to keep food.

Any suggestions would be welcome. I'm not a fan of nuts but I'l told they are good.

Ray

Hi Ray

Welcome back and glad to hear that you are ready to go back to work.
It sounds as if you are already diong well with your levels and keeping them in a good range, especially so soon after diagnosis.

Bolus Insulin
Are you now adjusting your doses of Bolus insulin to match what you choose to eat, or using a fixed dose?
Whichever you are doing these are taken around meal times so you should be able to eat at any time and just use the Bolus to match the food you eat. If you are in fixed doses, you might want to be boring for the first week and take in the same lunch, of a known amount of carbs, each day so you can see what happens with that and get used to sorting out the insuiln for that amount of carbs. If you want a change you could switch something but keep to the same amount of carbs.
Apart from that you would not need to eat at other times, but if you choose to snack between meals and it is carbs, it will need some insulin to go with it. It would be useful to talk to your DSN about this, and also about adjusting doses

Background Insulin
In theory your background insulin (basal) should be covering the glucose that your body is making, but this may need adjusting as you go back to work, because you may be a bit more active or less if you are desk bound. (I had different Bolus regime for weekday and for weekends when I was working).

Hypo treatment and other stuff at work.
As always you will need to have hypo treatments with you. I also had extras in various places at work, as well as a spare set of pens in the fridge (I did forget my basal insulin one morning, and also forgot to take in my Bolus one day so was glad of these. There were times when I had rushed off to deal with something forgetting to pick up my bag, and was glad of the JBs at the other end of school.

Informing colleagues
I chose to let my colleagues know, and my classes and explained about hypos and that I would deal with these, but needed to do so immediately. We agreed that a student would let my neighbouring colleague know if I was hypo, especially at the start as it was all a bit wobbly wobbly at the start. Things soon settled into a pattern and levels levelled out more so we’re more predicatable.

As with so much to do with Diabetes it is all a matter of trial and improvement.

Let us know how you get on.

 

[Matt Cycle]

Hi Ray. If you have to eat snacks to prevent hypos then this suggests your insulin doses are incorrect (too high). As SB says your basal insulin works away in the background and deals with the glucose released by the liver to keep your body functioning. Your bolus deals with the carbs you're eating. No problems in having snacks but you will need to carb count them (anything over 10g) and take the appropriate bolus insulin dose. Obviously if calculations go a bit wrong (which they do 🙄 ) then you need to treat any hypos that occur.

 

[HOBIE]

Well well done for going back to work. Keeping active is the right way. For your head & body. Good luck 😎