can you make my finger less sore

Hi,

I feel for you and it must be an awful prediciment to me in. Personally I tend to test about 4-5 times a day...i always test when I wake and before bed also...in between because my control is good I test sometimes before, sometimes after eating but always if I feel different / edgy.

I can't offer any advice as it's your little one but if it was my child I'd probably check before bed and then again in the morning. Initially I'd check through the night but once I had developed a good routine then leave the ones that mean interrupting sleep. (I will reiterate this is not advice at all, this is merely my view on what I would do!).

It must be hard for you though. My kids hardly ever eat what is dished up for them to eat and if your kid is injecting before food it must be a nightmare to get them to eat the right amount to avoid a hypo.

Really hope you get the advice you need and good luck.

JC

It is really hard for someone else to make the call on how many times you test. I know there is a case for overtesting and I do try to limit the tests on my son to what I think he needs. I was told to try and test 4-6 times a day but my reply was that I test an average of 7 times per 24 hours. If things are going well I am quite happy to miss some of those pre or post meal tests. Currently poor Khaleb is very sick and he will most likely be tested 10-12 times today. He's on heaps of insulin and I need to watch for him getting suddenly better and not needing such large doses. He's hardly eating so that is another problem when being so liberal with dosage.

As for sore fingers ... I am careful to rotate up and down the side area of the finger and not get into a habit of picking up the same hand all the time. At night I tend to use a toe but if he's not really asleep this can be a bit tickling, especially if I've got cold hands. Some lancers are definitely better than others so it is worth experimenting with a couple of brands and what depth is best. Khaleb's fingers are in excellent condition even though I do find they take a bit longer to heal over winter.

As for getting up at night ... I do it just about every night. I test Khaleb at 10pm before I go to bed, then 2am. If I wasn't sure he'd make it through to morning at 2am I would just give him something then so I could go back to sleep. I'm getting up more often at the moment (illness) but under normal circumstance I'd feed/drink rather than get up twice. I really miss sleep!

You'll do what you need to do and I'm sure it isn't just habit. To keep control you need the numbers to form trends to follow and know when doses need adjusting.

I admire all your dedication! No way would my parents ever have got up at night to test me. If I had a night hypo at my mum's, she usually heard me and came to help, but at my dad's (where I lived 12 days out of 14) I was left to fend for myself. Which is why I tended to treat hypos with half a box of rice krispies. No wonder I hate cereal now!

I did the dafne course, they don't seem to think there's much point in post meal testing. They see tests as info to help you make a decision about how much to inject, so they don't really tell you to test when you're not about to eat. Except bedtime obviously. Maybe you could try just testing at meal time, bed time and to confirm a hypo? But don't drop to too few! I didn't test enough when I was a kid and regret it now. The earlier you can get kids into that routine, the easier it'll be for them to continue when they're older.

Interesting that DAFNE reckons not much point to post-meal testing. I would go further, and say it's actually unhelpful to do post-meal testing. Every time I've tried to do it I've ended up over-correcting and getting into a horrible hypo/hyper swinging battle which has made me feel ill.
Don't forget diabetes is a marathon, not a sprint. Part of controlling it is finding a way to actually live comfortably, and happily. Interrupting sleep... no.

When I was still learning the basics of how to balance my diabetes and was testing till my fingers were painful, a diabetic diabetes nurse gave me a very good piece of advice: you don't need to test all day every day. You can give yourself a break and test through the week, like a sort of audit. Eg test at breakfast on Monday, lunch on Tuesday, dinner on Wednesday, nighttime on Thursday. In between, if you have a specific "question" (like am I going hypo, or did this insulin dose change work) then obviously you test that. But the 'audit' approach really enabled me to see patterns and allowed me to relax a bit, without damaging the overall control.

Snodger, how old were you when you got diabetes?

My son was 8 months old and is now 3.5yrs. In young kids small amounts of insulin can make for horrid hypos so post meal testing can be very important to make sure they haven't been overdosed (probably more important than the pre-meal test). At least pre meal if they are a little on the low side they are about to eat.

Just a comment...

ah, fair enough, I didn't know that. I was in my late teens when diagnosed. Sorry if I offended.

No offence. I imagine it is harder when diagnosed as an adult or teenager than when very young. The differences in management and target ranges are much different in young children. It is a real juggle. 1 unit of Novorapid will drop Khaleb about 8mmol but when he was first diagnosed 1 unit would drop his blood sugar by 15mmol. It was a loaded gun. This just isn't such a problem as body weight increases.

Khaleb is really ill and the other night we went to bed at 10pm, his bsl was 12 and I just gave him 10gm carb supper. At 1am his bsl was 1.5 :shock: and you can imagine this scared the you-know-what out of me. Luckily I have an appointment on Tuesday with his Paediatrician as things have really got out of hand. Up till a couple of months ago things were going so well. I'm just hoping the hypo was a sign that he's getting better.