Basel testing help

Hi,

I was wondering if you could offer some help and advice regarding doing a basel test to make sure we have got the info right. My wife is T1 and we are planning to try and have a family soon so we want to get her bloods as best we can. She has a HAB1c of 6.5% and we have been told to try and get this down a little further. The problem is although my wife has a fairly good HAB1c I'm led to believe, there is seldom a day when she does not have one or more readings that are in double figures. We keep a log of all her food, carbs, activity and blood levels with an app. Over the last couple of weeks, the pattern mostly is high levels first thing in the morning, averaging 11-15. We've spoken to her DN and we're going to increase her Levemir and do some basel testing exercises. I just wanted to check that we are going about doing the basel testing right before we start it next week.

So here's the plan-

Eat at 6pm a low GI meal (we usually do that anyway) How many Grams of carb should we aim for when doing a basel testing?
Going to bed at 10pm as normal then doing testing blood at that point and giving Levemir, then testing every 2hrs.
Wake up at approx 6-7am, testing and giving Levemir dose.
Low carb breakfast. Is an omlette and a slice of brown toast ok?
Testing regularly every 2 hrs up to lunch time then go back to regular lunches.

If the blood levels go lower than 4.5 or higher than 9.5 we will stop the test.

Any advice is much appreciated, thanks.

noblehead said:

Keep the grams of carbs within reason for her evening meal, say no more than 60g and make sure the meal doesn't have a high-fat content as this can interfere with bg levels hours later.

It's best to do basal test one meal at a time, so don't worry too much about breakfast if your doing a night-time fasting basal check, but your wife's morning high may just be down to the Dawn Phenomenon which most diabetics see to some degree.

Have a read of the following which offers some good advice on basal testing, it's for pump users but the basics are much the same:

http://www.salforddiabetescare.co.uk/index2.php?nav_id=1007

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Thanks. I haven't seen that page on the salford site before and its extremely helpful. I'll have a readup on dawn thenomenon in the meantime. We're meeting with the DN at the end of the month so hopefully be able to work things out.

donnellysdogs said:

Ask the hospital about a pump.. Many pregnant women are given pumps as a loan whilst pregnant.

As it is a bit hit n miss initially on a pump it makes sense (to me) to have one pre prgnancy.

If levels can't be stabilised with all attempts pre pregnancy then that should qualify your spouse to have a pump providing evthing has been done to achieve.....

Don't know if consuderation has been made for a pump but it certainly would help to stop peaks....

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The DB team suggested a pump the last time several months ago but my wife isn't keen on the idea. She would need to the DAFNE course too for it which she isn't keen on doing because she thinks its more aimed at people who are new to diabetes. I'm sure it wouldn't hurt though. We'll probably discuss it again when we see them next time.

Thanks for the DP link noblehead. I'll take a look now.