Hi
@Tally, I was on similar amounts of insulin for my meals when diagnosed, but I had to report my levels each day once I was home from hospital and they gave me an idea about adjusting the doses of novorapid. Initially, I didn't have any problems with my appetite, although I suspect that is largely due to the manner of my diagnosis, which was markedly different to yours. I contracted a virus and whilst I thought it was just a sickness bug that I would get over in two or three days it just kept getting worse - I couldn't eat and lost 17 pounds in 3 days - basically because my pancreas had been overwhelmed and I wasn't getting any energy from food, so my body fat and muscle protein were being used. This resulted in very high ketones and DKA (Diabetic Ketoacidosis) and I ended up in hospital. However, once they gave me insulin I became RAVENOUS
😱 I could easily eat a horse between two bread vans
😱 🙂 This continued for about 3 weeks after leaving hospital, then things settled down.
Very early days for you. I suspect the fixed doses have been arrived at using some general calculation based on your body weight etc. I started on 65 total daily units (20 long acting lantus and 45 novorapid). Within a month these doses had reduced to around 35-40 total daily units, and a more logical split of novorapid according to the meals about to be consumed. Get in touch with your team and get them to suggest a reduction so you don't feel that you are having to 'feed the insulin' to avoid hypos. At this stage your are probably better with slightly elevated levels. Try not to worry about hypos though, you know the symptoms, how to treat them and what planning you need to make if they are unexpected, like keeping jelly babies in every room
😉)
Not sure if anyone has suggested it, but I would really recommend getting a copy of
Type 1 Diabetes in Children Adolescents and Young People by Ragnar Hanas - you will learn a lot from it and it covers all aspects of living with Type 1 in a very accessible way. It's not cheap, but worth every penny - I think the NHS should give a copy to every newly-diagnosed Type 1!
🙂
My tip would be to test, test, test and record so you can learn to associate what you eat with how your levels react - before eating, an hour, two hours, four hours after eating - and keep a food diary with carb details alongside the numbers
🙂 What may be happening also is that your levels are spiking up after eating then dropping back down again as the insulin begins to peak - testing at regular intervals after eating will help inform you about this.
If you want a quick guide to carb counting, get a copy of the free
'Carbs Count' booklet from Diabetes UK - there's some more information on the following link:
https://www.diabetes.org.uk/Guide-t...and-diabetes/nuts-and-bolts-of-carb-counting/
There's a lot to take in at first, but keep asking questions and you will get there!
🙂
