OK, so I figured I’d give a debrief of last nights events if only for learning purposes. I got home yesterday at 1430 from work. Lici was a little high at 278 so we gave her a .5 unit correction. The plan was to go get dinner from Boston market at around 1600 and eat at home before trick or treating . Instead of bringing it back home I decided it would be easier to eat it at the restaurant. The drive is about 15 minutes and I didn’t want to let the food get cold. Her food included Mac-n-Cheese and was about 56 carbs. A little high for her but not ridiculous and she was at a 211 BG which means her correction was still working. Since we had corrected only 2 hours earlier I was worried about stacking insulin and only gave her 1 of the 1.5 units she was supposed to get. My wife checked her as we were about to leave to trick or treat about 1745. 440 great now my daughter is a walking Macys day float and I’m gonna have to pull her down before she blows away. After talking with another T1 parent I decided to give her the rest of the .5 units from her dinner but not correct due to fear of stacking. We also tested for ketones and she was negative. A revision to my plan was to walk her around the neighborhood and force water down her every 10 minutes. You see where this is going? It worked. She started dropping. She also started peeing. A lot. Thankfully I knew enough people scattered throughout the neighborhood that we could use their bathrooms. 1845 300 BG. Ok is she going down too fast? 1900 270 BG. 1930 211 BG plus one starburst and she wet the bed. She ended up being around 140 all night long but I checked her every 2 hours. I feel like the NBC commercials “The More You Know!” Happy Halloween!
140 all night. On Halloween. After restaurant mac & cheese. That is not a failure. Mac & cheese is hard for many to dose for, particularly if it’s not homemade. The fat slows down the carbs so it ends up being much like pizza.
Hope she had a great time in spite of the curveballs.
@Restless_Daddy after a 2nd look at my comment, I didn’t mean to make light of your perspective on the night. I remember feeling like a total failure most of the time that first year. I had a plan & did all the math. It should’ve worked. Many times the results were not even close to expectations. 9 1/2 years later, they still aren’t. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re trying to be a replacement for a perfectly-designed, functioning body part. Do the best you can each time, & try to learn from the missteps. And most importantly, try to keep a positive attitude about all of it. She’ll pick up on any negativity no matter how much you think you’re hiding it. To quote my favorite blogger: " It doesn’t get easier. You get better."
I considered posting. lol.
My post was going to say the same thing.
Two of the most difficult foods we find to bolus for are pasta (with sauce and meatballs) and pizza (two slices).
Pizza and pasta are on my no fly liist. Unless I make it, then I know the carbs. Restaurant food is problematic. Mac and cheese is loaded with carbs and fat.
Maybe a homemade salad instead, on Halloween.
I was talking about this yesterday. After age 10, I never went trick or treating. In 1964, T1 for two years, I dressed as a witch and sat outside to hand out candy, that I couldn’t eat, to my friends.
It’s hard.
@T1Forever that’s just heartbreaking. My daughter was 11 at dx, so she thought she was too old for trick or treating. We never withheld anything or kept her from participating in any event along with the other kids. There were times she chose not to have classroom treats or extras during the holidays (she hated the extra shots), but it was always her choice to make. I’m so thankful for modern treatment options.
My daughter actually went low while we were doing trunk or treat. She said “oh good, I can eat some of this candy!”. So she had a few and a caprisun and she went back up to a reasonable amount.
I had the same reaction as @tiaE and @Tim35 - 140 all night? Success!!
But it sounds like it was a lot of work and a a lot of stress to get to that point and I remember doing that and how all-consuming and exhausting it can be because all you want is for your kid to have a reasonably “normal” Halloween.
This is your first Halloween. All the firsts are the toughest. You joke about “the more you know,” but with diabetes it’s definitely true, and much of it you have to experience because everyone is different and you can’t get formulas out of a book tailored to every life circumstance. So each experience is a building block to refining your diabetes approach and management.
Interesting that you titled this “Halloween Failure”, but is there ever a pass with type 1?
I used to think about our endo clinic visits that way, and I felt like my daughter’s numbers were the test results and that I had ‘failed’ when her A1C went up or wasn’t where I wanted it to be. I envisioned a huge red “F” on her clinic sheet… lol.
I shed buckets of tears at clinic, our Dr probably used to dread me coming. But then he told me one time that that Type 1 is about making thousands of tiny corrections, always with the goal in mind, but not beating yourself up if you got off course.
Your daughter got up to 440 which is a hard number to see, but my 11 year old daughter, who has been type 1 since just before her 6th birthday, was 540 (30) the other day just because she forgot to give herself insulin in the afternoon! I still get upset, but try not too because it happens. At our house likely more than I would like it too.
But if you can start thinking about numbers as information and not judgment, and recognize the fact that no matter how hard you try to control everything, something else will mess up your well made plans, you can start seeing Type 1 as a journey and every day is a new day.
So my two cents, it wasn’t a fail, it was just a day in the life of type 1. 