Christmas and Type 1 Diabetes.

Christmas is almost upon us and people with diabetes tend to approach holidays like this one with dread. We do tend to go a little bit insane with all the chocolate, boxes sweets, tins of biscuits, and mince pies.

Anyway, people have asked for a number of years at my support group about tips for dealing with Christmas and we've shared some valuable tips. Lots of them can be found on other blogs (sorry).

For me, Christmas is about one day. I don't have any office parties to go too, being a stay-at-home mum. I have a couple of coffee mornings with other Mums and I do have a birthday 9 days before christmas but I don't go nuts. It's more about the company than the food. I have dinner and cake and deal;-)

Christmas day is a "limited" day off from diabetes. I do my blood glucose tests, I guestimate the carbs as much as possible, I bolus and bolus conservatively and probably bolus some more. If I fancy the food I eat it. I stop when I'm full. We have potatoes A LOT in Ireland for dinner and on Christmas day I usually skip them altogether in favour of stuffing. It usually works out - call it a christmas miracle :-)

When we visit my husband's family in the US for Christmas there is usually so many activities going on that the food is an after-thought. Plus, there are so many of us that the goodies "disappear" extremely quickly.

I don't tend to sit around a lot on Christmas day either; we travel to my mothers down the country for dinner and once the dishes are done, we move ourselves to my brothers house for the present giving.

For others, Christmas Day usually isn't the problem though, it's the numerous parties, and giving into the grocery department's tempting treats in the 6-8 weeks that run up to Christmas. (When did we all start making this holiday about food?)

My approach is; for Christmas day, I let my hair down and don't worry about that one day. But for the rest of December all the rules apply and as soon as the children go back to school it's back to the old routine.

I hope you all find ways to cope with your Christmas and enjoy it.

I will be taking a break from blogging until the New Year, so....

Happy Christmas, Happy Holidays!!!

Elephants never forget... just get distracted

21 years with type 1 diabetes and this very seldom happens but it does happen. I did say to myself "how is it possible that I forgot to bolus for a meal?" 

Then I reminded myself that it usually happens when a young person starts a sentence with "Mom ...".

Anyway, I very rarely forget to take my bolus insulin but this morning I did. It was breakfast. I usually catch the error when I'm expecting my insulin pump to notify me that it's been two hours since I bolused and that I should be my post-meal blood glucose test. This morning I had the added incentive of my weekly coffee morning and wanting to test before I left the house. 

I tested and I was 17.8 mmol/ls (323 mg/dl)!!! I knew I had started the day with reasonable (i.e. single digit) number, so I went into my pump history to see if I actually bolused. Surprise!!! No bolus, thank goodness for insulin pump histories. 

I took my correction bolus of 2+ units and wondered how taking my insulin before breakfast can make such a HUGE difference? I have a medium sized bowl of porridge (I know, boring but reliable) and take 0.60 units which usually brings me in a little under the target for the two hours post-meal test. However, two cups of coffee later I'm on target for lunch.

I'm surprised that 0.60 units make such a difference, compared to the 2 units I needed to cover my breakfast two hours later.

I pause for thought!

Do you ever feel like all you see are the Highs and the Lows?

When you look at your record book, do you ever feel like all you see are the high blood glucose readings or the lows. Do you ever notice that you have a number of decent readings but that they don't count?

I test approximately 8 times a day and last night I realised that most of those readings were fairly decent, as in fairly close to my targets.

But when I went to bed last night all I was think about was the 12mmols before bedtime and how it was going to be high again in the morning. I then realised that the other 7 readings I took that day were decent (I'm not going to jinx it by saying they were good).

I seem to focus on the ones that are high and the few that are low. I know that I have to think about those readings more so that I can try to eliminate them but shouldn't I think more about the good readings to keep my head in a good space?

I'm being hard on myself. My endo always tells me that and that it's never as bad as I think. I suppose I'm afraid to give myself a pat on the back when I'm doing well because, no. 1 is it really my work that is to be credited, I mean who knows, it could just be all the stars lining up in the universe. Or No.2, I'm afraid to give myself a pat on the back because I might just get complacent and let things start to slide.

Or is it just because tomorrow is another day with diabetes.