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Helpful Advice/ Tips Please

clairebear7979

Member
Messages
6
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Hi all fairly newly diagnosed type 1 diabetic found out early feb this year.
I was hoping someone could offer me some advice. I'm a mother of 3 teenage kids so my life is rather busy at the best of times.
My problem is, is feeling tired all the time and having little or no energy I have to push myself to do the day to day things of running my home and looking after my family.
I'm 38 and by 7:30pm I'm ready for bed. I'm lucky if I'm still awake by 10, evenings are the only time my husband and I really get anytime to ourselves and it's getting to me quite a bit that I carnt stay awake long enough to even have a conversation.
My life is quite busy and there is a lot of stress within my family at the moment so being able to talk with each other on a evening would be nice, instead of climbing into bed and practically passing out from exhaustion.

Any hints or tips or advice would be great
Thanks for reading
 
What is your BG like in the evening? I find I feel exhausted if my BG is high.
What basal insulin do you take and when do you take it? If you take it before you go to bed, you may find it is "running" out as some people find their basal may ink last 22 hours.
Alternatively, your tiredness may be just part of the stress of your recent diagnosis. It takes some time to adjust to taking reading, counting carb, not panicking about hypos, ... all whilst looking after 3 boys and trying to live your life. All I can say to that is to be kind to yourself: things get better as they become familiar.
My first stop would be to take more BG readings to understand whether their is any correlation between your tiredness and your BG. If you have he chance to try a Libre (even as a one off) it may help give an insight.
 
I don't know what basal means but I'm on novarapid for meals 6 units and glargine on an evening 18 units. Also I have no clue what libre is either
sorry. Still don't know all that much if I'm honest still learning with a long way to go it seems lol.

Thanks for replying
 
Hi @clairebear7979
OK, bolus is your novorapid taken with meals deals with carbs in food.
Basal is your glargine, deals with glucose released by the liver, supposed to keep levels steady when you are not eating.
Libre - freestyle Libre from Abbott, it's a flash glusoce monitor that you attach to your arm, lasts a fortnight and gives you readings all day not just the snapshot finger pricks.
How about buying a copy of the book Think Like a Pancreas, this will help with the basics.
 
You're on a basal/bolus regime. The glargine is your basal, and is meant to cover your insulin needs when you're not eating (eg overnight): even when you're resting your body is burning energy and that is supplied by your liver when you're fasting.
Your bolus, the novorapid, is meant to cover the food you have for meals. If you get the balance right you can theoretically eat whenever you like (miss meals, eat at 2am) because the basal covers you when you're not eating and the bolus covers the food you eat. Most people also inject a bit of extra bolus when their blood sugars are too high, as a correction. (Your nurse should have given you a correction factor, for you it's probably 1 unit of novorapid for every 3 mmol/L that you want your blood sugar to reduce by. ) Once you learn to count carbohydrates you'll also be able to vary your bolus to account for the amount you're eating. A lot of stuff to learn, so don't worry if you're not there yet, you'll get there in the end.

The libre is a continuous glucose monitor: you stick it on your arm and scan it with a reader (or your phone) to get your current blood sugar with no finger pricking.
 
Get on a carbohydrates counting course asap and try and get on insulin pump when possible would be my advise.
 
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