Newly diagnosed type 1 teacher who likes to dance

[Tinks_88]

Hi there,

I was diagnosed 2 weeks ago after a blood test, not yet confirmed but probably type 1.5.

I am a primary school teacher, work is very busy. Does anyone have any tips on how to manage diabetes in this setting?

I also love to dance and am currently trying to work out what exercise will do to blood sugar levels. So far it seems that they drop down before rising up slightly again by the end of the class. Not quite what I was expecting!

I have spent the last couple of weeks reading the forums so have decided to take the plunge and join in!

 

[SB2015]

Hi there,

I was diagnosed 2 weeks ago after a blood test, not yet confirmed but probably type 1.5.

I am a primary school teacher, work is very busy. Does anyone have any tips on how to manage diabetes in this setting?

I also love to dance and am currently trying to work out what exercise will do to blood sugar levels. So far it seems that they drop down before rising up slightly again by the end of the class. Not quite what I was expecting!

I have spent the last couple of weeks reading the forums so have decided to take the plunge and join in!

Hi Tinks

I was teaching when I was diagnosed, and as you say work was very busy. I was in secondary so a bit different and a bigger building probably.

A few things that helped me were:
Make sure that the school understand about hypos.
There is no choice but to treat this immediately. I had older students and I explained to them what a hypo was and that if I asked them for help they should go and get another adult. The staff near me knew what to do.

Inhad jelly babies everywhere.
These were in my classroom, the office, in each building in which I taught.

Spare pens in school
I had a spare set of pens in school, for those VERY rare occasions that I forgot to do insulin in the morning, and or forgot to take my pens into school.

I found it particularly difficult during the first few months when I was still in the honeymoon period. My pancreas clearly still had a few beta cells still working but when they got tired they sulked for a while, and then woke up again. So my insulin needs were quite unpredicatable and hypos happened without any logical reason. Very frustrating. Once I got into the swing of things I never needed the back up stuffbut it was good to know that they were there.

I hope this is of some help. If you have any questions keep asking. I have probably forgotten other ideas/ issues that arose.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

I also love to dance and am currently trying to work out what exercise will do to blood sugar levels. So far it seems that they drop down before rising up slightly again by the end of the class. Not quite what I was expecting!

It varies, I'm afraid. Usually it's going to go down, and (depending on how much activity is involved) you may find plummeting BG later (that night, or (some find) even the next day). But as you note, sometimes it'll go up.

 

[SB2015]

Exercise BG
I have found that for different levels of exercise I use a combination of reducing background (basal) insulin and/or reducing a meal insulin (bolus) and/or having a snack during the class/dancing. The only way I have found out is through trial and improvement and lots of testing.

I also found it strange when my BG rose after an exercise class. @Matt Cycle solved that one for me by suggesting a small snack at the end of the class, to avoid my liver dumping glucose to top my levels up. I still need to bolus for the snack but just a jelly baby solves it for me.

 

[Ralph-YK]

Welcome to the forum @Tinks_88

I also love to dance and am currently trying to work out what exercise will do to blood sugar levels. So far it seems that they drop down before rising up slightly again by the end of the class.

Dance class? Are you teaching? What style?

 

[Janey5]

Welcome from another newbie!

 

[Tinks_88]

Hi Tinks

I was teaching when I was diagnosed, and as you say work was very busy. I was in secondary so a bit different and a bigger building probably.

A few things that helped me were:
Make sure that the school understand about hypos.
There is no choice but to treat this immediately. I had older students and I explained to them what a hypo was and that if I asked them for help they should go and get another adult. The staff near me knew what to do.

Inhad jelly babies everywhere.
These were in my classroom, the office, in each building in which I taught.

Spare pens in school
I had a spare set of pens in school, for those VERY rare occasions that I forgot to do insulin in the morning, and or forgot to take my pens into school.

I found it particularly difficult during the first few months when I was still in the honeymoon period. My pancreas clearly still had a few beta cells still working but when they got tired they sulked for a while, and then woke up again. So my insulin needs were quite unpredicatable and hypos happened without any logical reason. Very frustrating. Once I got into the swing of things I never needed the back up stuffbut it was good to know that they were there.

I hope this is of some help. If you have any questions keep asking. I have probably forgotten other ideas/ issues that arose.

Some great tips there, thank you. I took an extra pen in to school to leave in the fridge today, and am slowly building up a selection of snacks for those hungry times when I’m not injecting insulin!

Today I had my first hypo, mid flow teaching an English starter. Fortunately I had a TA in the classroom with me who was able to take over so I could nip out to test and then stuff jelly babies into my mouth! Did you find you were able to stay in the classroom teaching during a hypo? I didn’t today, but there will be times when I don’t have a TA.

 

[Tinks_88]

Exercise BG
I have found that for different levels of exercise I use a combination of reducing background (basal) insulin and/or reducing a meal insulin (bolus) and/or having a snack during the class/dancing. The only way I have found out is through trial and improvement and lots of testing.

I also found it strange when my BG rose after an exercise class. @Matt Cycle solved that one for me by suggesting a small snack at the end of the class, to avoid my liver dumping glucose to top my levels up. I still need to bolus for the snack but just a jelly baby solves it for me.

Thanks for your advice, sounds like you are an expert when it comes to exercise! Is it a bad thing for it to go up after exercise? Or only if it’s above the ‘normal’ range?

At the moment I’m on a set amount of insulin at meal times and a set night time basal dose too. I’m going back to see the nurse and dietician next week so guess they may make suggestions as to changes to doses.

 

[Tinks_88]

Welcome to the forum @Tinks_88

Dance class? Are you teaching? What style?

Not teaching, just participating! I do tap, jazz, lyrical and ballet. I teach in primary so teach all subjects, it does include some dance during PE too

 

[Ralph-YK]

I do tap, jazz, lyrical and ballet.

Cool. I was never any good at it
I hope you're hypo wasn't too bad.

At the moment I’m on a set amount of insulin at meal times and a set night time basal dose too.

I don't do insulin myself. I believe that is common. My understanding is they give it a chance to work, check your levels and adjust your insulin. Trying to avoid hypo's as well as getting your levels down.

 

[Tinks_88]

Cool. I was never any good at it
I hope you're hypo wasn't too bad.


I don't do insulin myself. I believe that is common. My understanding is they give it a chance to work, check your levels and adjust your insulin. Trying to avoid hypo's as well as getting your levels down.

The hypo wasn’t too bad, I had thought it might be worse! I’m guessing there can be good and bad hypos though!

 

[mikeyB]

If it’s any encouragement Tinks, my mum was T1 and taught primary for 30 years with the diagnosis. Don’t recall her having any time off, but the way retirement ages are going, you might have to put in 50

 

[Radders]

Some great tips there, thank you. I took an extra pen in to school to leave in the fridge today, and am slowly building up a selection of snacks for those hungry times when I’m not injecting insulin!

Today I had my first hypo, mid flow teaching an English starter. Fortunately I had a TA in the classroom with me who was able to take over so I could nip out to test and then stuff jelly babies into my mouth! Did you find you were able to stay in the classroom teaching during a hypo? I didn’t today, but there will be times when I don’t have a TA.

Hi from another T1 ex teacher. Answer is it depends on the hypo. I’ve been able to swallow a few glucose tablets and carry on when students have been getting on with something, and i’ve also had to send a sensible student to the office to get someone to sit with my class while I recover. If I was in the presentation mode of a lesson and felt warning signs I would stop and give the students a quick task to get on with while sorting myself out. This can be nigh impossible to work out when the brain is starved of glucose so I had some up my sleeve so they didn’t require much thinking about.
I did have a period of horrible disabling hypos when the students realised something was wrong and they were amazing: just calmly went and got help. In a primary setting I would suggest you think about how you could tell your class about your condition and so they won’t be scared and will know what to do if you do get a hypo. It’s unlikely you’ll get them without warning in the early days.

 

[HOBIE]

How long is a piece of string ? 50 odd years & every day its not the same ? Still employed & never been unemployed in my life. Do what you are doing & keep active. Good luck 😉 T1 ? (hard work at times)

 

[SB2015]

The hypo wasn’t too bad, I had thought it might be worse! I’m guessing there can be good and bad hypos though!

It is likely that at this stage you will pick up hypos. The thing I had to make sure Is that I dealt with the straight away. There was the temptation to think I’ll just get this activity going and then I will sort out the hypo.

The problem I found was that I had a few hypos at the start that were totally unpredictable. This was due to the Honeymoon period and my last surviving beta cells just deciding to start playing again without any warning. I had to stop myself trying to work out why it was happening, and just TREAT IT.

Like Radders I had a set of things I could immediately switch to which did not need my intervention. As I was in secondary, I found the students picked up my hypos as soon as I did and they became adept at sorting themselves out, switching to the problem box that was on every table.

(They did these activities on arrival at the lesson as well, as students came from all over the school so arrived at different times. They worked on them in pairs or groups and helped each other. The answers were on the back. They also wrote the problem cards for me as their homework at the end of a topic, checked each other’s the following lesson and handed them over to me once checked. I made sure they were okay, used our agreed colour coding for the level of difficulty. These were used by all my groups. I have supported teachers in setting this up in KS2 as well)

 

[Tinks_88]

Hi from another T1 ex teacher. Answer is it depends on the hypo. I’ve been able to swallow a few glucose tablets and carry on when students have been getting on with something, and i’ve also had to send a sensible student to the office to get someone to sit with my class while I recover. If I was in the presentation mode of a lesson and felt warning signs I would stop and give the students a quick task to get on with while sorting myself out. This can be nigh impossible to work out when the brain is starved of glucose so I had some up my sleeve so they didn’t require much thinking about.
I did have a period of horrible disabling hypos when the students realised something was wrong and they were amazing: just calmly went and got help. In a primary setting I would suggest you think about how you could tell your class about your condition and so they won’t be scared and will know what to do if you do get a hypo. It’s unlikely you’ll get them without warning in the early days.

Thanks so much for your reply, love the idea of having a few independent activities ready to go in case of an emergency hypo! I think the one I had on Friday was probably quite mild and could of stayed in class, but it’s all new at the moment so feels harder! Sure I’ll get there though.

 

[Tinks_88]

It is likely that at this stage you will pick up hypos. The thing I had to make sure Is that I dealt with the straight away. There was the temptation to think I’ll just get this activity going and then I will sort out the hypo.

The problem I found was that I had a few hypos at the start that were totally unpredictable. This was due to the Honeymoon period and my last surviving beta cells just deciding to start playing again without any warning. I had to stop myself trying to work out why it was happening, and just TREAT IT.

Like Radders I had a set of things I could immediately switch to which did not need my intervention. As I was in secondary, I found the students picked up my hypos as soon as I did and they became adept at sorting themselves out, switching to the problem box that was on every table.

(They did these activities on arrival at the lesson as well, as students came from all over the school so arrived at different times. They worked on them in pairs or groups and helped each other. The answers were on the back. They also wrote the problem cards for me as their homework at the end of a topic, checked each other’s the following lesson and handed them over to me once checked. I made sure they were okay, used our agreed colour coding for the level of difficulty. These were used by all my groups. I have supported teachers in setting this up in KS2 as well)

I can definitely see myself trying to carry on when in hypo, so I will try to keep your advice in mind when the situation arises! Definitely going to consider having some ready to go activities, love the idea of children writing their own questions based on a topic. Thank you

 

[SB2015]

I can definitely see myself trying to carry on when in hypo, so I will try to keep your advice in mind when the situation arises! Definitely going to consider having some ready to go activities, love the idea of children writing their own questions based on a topic. Thank you

I used ice cream tubs, which took A5 cards. I cut a pack of card in half. For Homework I asked them to write me three problems which had to include one easy one and one difficult one. This told me more than any homework I set about their level of understanding, and the pairs work the following day checking their questions gave me a chance to work with them on any remaining problems. They also enjoyed contributing to the pot of questions.

 

[Radders]

I can definitely see myself trying to carry on when in hypo, so I will try to keep your advice in mind when the situation arises! Definitely going to consider having some ready to go activities, love the idea of children writing their own questions based on a topic. Thank you

I used to do this every Christmas: teams writing questions for a quiz as a revision exercise. The questions were rubbish at first but they quickly learned how to write better ones when they tried them out.

 

[Matt Cycle]

Hi Tinks and welcome to the forum. 🙂 Exercise is a tricky one to advise on as the effects can be quite individual. In general aerobic exercise tends to lower blood glucose and anaerobic will often increase it. I don't know a lot about dancing but most exercise features elements of both and duration comes into play as well. The best thing to do is try it, keep glucose close to hand and do plenty of testing. Over time you should get a better idea of how it's affecting you but remember with T1 you can sometimes think I've got the hang of this and it can suddenly decide to go freestyle. Don't let that put you off as exercise is great for the mind, body and soul or summat like that anyway. Runsweet has lots of info on T1 and all different sorts of exercise. 🙂