Honeymoon highs

[wsmum]

Hello everyone. Hoping you can cast your minds back to your diabetic honeymoons! My son, 14, is still strongly honeymooning with ratios of around 1:50/1:45 at the moment. He needs a little more insulin in the evening. I thought that the honeymoon was when your own pancreas was still working a bit, and yet if we miscalculate carbs even a little bit his numbers do go quite high (eg. last night when he was at 13 a couple of hours after dinner. We realised we'd not done the maths quite right, but it's only a question of being half a unit out). Did this kind of thing happen to you? Can't understand why his own pancreas does not make up the shortfall if it's still working a bit. :? Thanks! Catherine

 

[Snodger]

To be honest I think the fact it's called a 'honeymoon' is a bit misleading - it makes it sound wonderful. In fact it can be a bit of a nightmare, as you've found, because for some of us the pancreas doesn't restart again properly; it just works in fits and starts. Mine didn't pack up properly for ages - was working fine, conking out, working a bit, conking out, etc for about 9 months. I think it sometimes pumped out a bit of insulin, just not quite enough, and sometimes whacked out too much, and it was hard to predict. There's not much to be done about it apart from what you are doing, keeping an eye and trying to make sure that the highs don't stay too high for too long.
I wouldn't worry too much about the occasional high. It's very, very hard to get bloods 'perfect' when you have type 1. Don't beat yourself up about it.

 

[RussG]

I think I'm in exactly the same position. My ratios seem to change every few days. I had a very consistent breakfast for a good few weeks that I had worked out the right dose for and suddenly this all went to pot and I was going hypo all the time for a few days. I have now been running too high even with what seem like really high doses. As Snodger says, honeymoon is actually quite misleading and perfection is not going to happen. Sometimes 'good enough' is good enough.

 

[wsmum]

Thanks ... good to hear your perspectives (and get some perspective!). My son will be weekly boarding from the end of August (all arranged long before the D arrived) so in a way it's quite useful to have to deal with a bit of unpredictability, since he's building up to independence and learning to make his own decisions. He also has lymphoedema in his legs which throws another spanner into the works ... Still, so far he's not letting any of this hold him back! Thanks again for your comments.

 

[Paulaah]

Hi wsmum,

I was diagnosed in Feb this year aged 39 and can totally relate to these spikes - particularly for me before bed. I'm quite under control during the day.

Last night I had a really healthy evening meal of salad and new potatoes, took the correct ratio in dose, and 3 hours later before bed I did my reading and I was 12!!!

I really couldn't believe it as I was higher than my calculation of how many mmols the carbs would increase my reading by in total, and I'd taken 1:1 ratio!!!!!

So frustrating, and really can't account for it, so I can really sympathise. It also messes up your morning reading if it doesn't sort itself out overnight.

Your son sounds like he's doing so well, and good luck to him for his new school.

Paula

 

[wsmum]

Thanks Paula
Diabetes seems to be such an individual disease - if William has new potatoes he's more likely to go hypo than with other carbs ... Yesterday his control was good all day and it did seem to make a positive difference to the evening reading.
We are going on holiday soon and our DSN suggests turning down the Lantus a bit before we go, so we'll be trying that. The few hot days we've had so far don't seem to have affected him much, but I'm fairly sure that the increased activity will.
Going off at a tangent now so I'll sign off!
Catherine