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Honeymoon - what happens next

M

mbudzi

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Anyone out there that can help put the honeymoon period into perspective for me?

I understand that insulin production will die off over an unknown period of time. However at the education day, everyone else had been diagnosed for years and was through the honeymoon period and rolled their eyes, saying make the most of it etc. Now I am living in dread of the next phase as I am a newby only 2 months in.

I seem to have reasonable control on an intermediate insulin twice a day (although I am struggling to understand what reasonable means too). I am getting to grips with managing food/eating, I'm now mentally unphased by doing my blood tests and am finally getting over a mild phobia of sticking a needle in myself but the thought that all this will spiral out of control when the honeymoon is over is playing on my mind a lot.

Can anyone give me an overview of what will happen. How do you know it has happened, what do you do to adjust to it, does it mean a change in insulin regime or is it just that things get a lot more unpredictable ... ? How awful is this going to get?

Thank you for any guidance to manage the trepidation.
 
I don't know and would like to know as well but my best guess would be that things will go back to how they were just after I was diagnosed (meal insulin for 60g carbs down to 1u from 16u); I'm already noticing increased insulin requirements - 4u Lantus in the morning was sufficient for a while (more gave me hypos around noon) but had to add bedtime Lantus because BG started creeping up.

Personally, I find honeymoon simply inconvenient - I had constant hypos because I'm didn't lower my insulin fast enough or was reluctant to eat breakfast without insulin, I had to get special paediatric pens and I now have a huge stockpile of Kwikpen (intended to last 6 weeks, they will now last for a year)
 
I was diagnosed just over a year ago so here's my approximate timeline so far. I use lantus and novorapid and carb count (ie calculate my novorapid dose based on what I am eating)

first 4 or 5 weeks was getting settled into routine and I was using fixed doses. Then I saw the dietitian who set me some ratios for insulin to carb grams. I was on 1 unit per 5 grams and quickly settled into what I felt was pretty good control (meaning most of my tests were in my target range with some blips when I tried new foods)

Around 4 months in I found I was getting quite a few hypos so dropped my lantus by about 4 units and changed novorapid to 1 unit per 10 grams. Again settled back into pattern within a couple of weeks.

Around 9 months I noticed I was having a lot of highs so upped the insulin gradually. Phew control back again for a while.

For the past few weeks I have been finding it much harder to keep things under control, some days I seem to be high for no apparent reason, some days I will have a couple of mild hypos. It's also that time of year where I've had a couple of colds. They haven't made me feel too bad but they are defiantly not helping the numbers.

Anyway for me all the changes have been pretty gradual, I really do have to keep an eye on my test results of the course of a week or so and I have learned to wait for a pattern to appear rather than make a sudden change based on one day.
 
Hi

My son (diagnosed at age 11) had quite a pronounced honeymoon period. A few weeks after starting on insulin, his insulin dose dropped right down - so much so that we went onto MDI because he was so sensitive to insulin and it became a bit easier. He was only having 1 unit of Lantus (long acting) insulin per day and needed a half-unit pen to deliver the tiny amounts of Novorapid required for meals. He had a lot of hypos at that stage too.

However, things did very gradually change. There was never any sudden increase in insulin needs, although we noticed that we had to increase the units each time he had coughs or colds and thereafter it didn't go back down again. Also, we of course have had to increase units with his growth.

To begin with during the honeymoon phase, daytime highs mostly corrected themselves overnight and some of the well known difficult foods for diabetics didn't really affect him. This effect has diminished gradually too :-( but at a pace which has allowed us to learn to manage things.

Even now, aged 15, he is still on only half a unit of insulin per day for every kg of his bodyweight - and he has had type 1 for almost 4 years. I think that technically, this still puts him in what would be called honeymoon and certainly his consultant describes him as insulin sensitive. He has never had any ketones (yet!) - which I think is also a sign that he has some of his own insulin production still.

Hopefully, it will cheer you to think that you might not experience any sudden deterioration of being 'more diabetic' and that like us you might just gently move out of honeymoon in a manner which is not too difficult to cope with. (Well, no more difficult than it is to cope with anyway!)

In fact, I would say it has become easier for us since he moved out of the pronounced honeymoon phase because things are more 'predictable' than they were when his own pancreas was doing its level best to push out insulin in a half-hearted fashion.
 
I'd agree with those who say that things may actually get better (more controllable) once the honeymoon's over. Interesting the reaction of the people you met... unusual, I'd say. I haven't met any other T1 who thought the honeymoon was a particularly good time, unless they could come right off insulin altogether. Having to mess about with a pancreas that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, plus tiny doses of insulin... personally I'd rather have no insulin production than intermittent insulin production.

So don't worry!
 
This thread is very interesting to me as I've been wondering exactly the same thing. I am probably an over anxious parent lol but I do worry about what will happen to William (14) when his honeymoon is over! This discussion has been reassuring ... He currently has 6u Lantus but his ratios for Novorapid are 1:15 and 1:20 depending on the time of day. Quite an imbalance between basal/bolus, so I think his pancreas is still trundling out small amounts of insulin which helps the basal along, but can't really cope with the big hit at meal times. William has had T1 for 8 months and for a while he hardly needed any insulin. Definitely going through some change at the moment. He is a weekly boarder at music school, so I only get to monitor things at weekends, which is quite hard for a controlling mum, ha ha!! He does carb count but he eats at a canteen so relies on educated guesses and the carbs & cals book rather than weighing food. Seems to be working OK so far, but I wonder if that will change when his pancreas packs up completely? Anyway, thanks all for an interesting discussion ...
 
I am diabetic for 1 year and 4 months now and I think my honeymoon has finished now.. I say 'think' because I am not sure..it is really hard to say when exactly it finishes. But anyways there's nothing sudden:pancreas make less and less and insulin intake increase little by little over a long time. I don't feel much difference when I was first diagnosed and now after more than year. Insulin doses changed, ofcourse, but not dramatically.
The only thought that scares me is that when it's finished, it's finished.
 
My son was diagnosed a year ago and entered honeymoon within a month and his insulin came down so much that he has been without insulin since march, his levels have been perfect and only test once a week, unless he feels tired or drinks a bit more etc. We are in limbo though, not knowing when it will rear its head again! no one seems to have heard of a honeymoon lasting a year and being off insulin completely!! we have no answers!! x
 
todmum, I have heard of people having honeymoons that last several years (off insulin), but it's very rare. There is, I believe, some research being done into it in London at the moment.
 
Thats interesting to know snodger, we are due appointment in january for consultant, havent seen her for 6 months as she said there wasnt any point!! But I will be asking questions and want more tests, because of all this we still cant quite believe he has type 1 or any diabetes, I think my son just wants to know what is going on, he is 16 now and has his own mind and wants to get on with his life knowing one way or the other!! Most people on honeymoon have some sort of medication!! x
 
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