Re: It's official--diabetes--long reply

[Guest guest]

Well,

This is just what I have been able to deduce from my gp and the nurse practioner

who helped me with my insulin pump. When I had mentioned to Dr Tick (the mito

guy) about my blood sugar going up his comment was " of course, do you want me to

talk to your endo? " . He is very intelligent but very bad about followup. I

usually have seen him up in Green Bay when he comes up to the Green Bay Heart

Care once a month and then has very limited time. One of these days I am going

to schedule an appt at his Milwaukee office.

That being said, my gp thinks that my blood sugar goes up with physical exercise

because the lactic acid being produced interfers with insulin.

We did a 3 day 24 hr blood sugar monitoring and with this and testing every two

hrs after I was on the pump we deduced that my body needed a small amout of

insulin every hour. I have the pump set to automatically every hour give me 1.8

units from 6 am to 10 pm and 1.4 during the night.

When I am going to walk around like a super walmart I set the meter to increase

the amount by say 1.5% for 2 hrs or else I give myself an extra 5 units or so.

By doing this I only occassionaly now have sugars over 200. Mostly when I

forget to give myself extra before exercise. While my sugars were always around

250 in the morning even after increasing insulin at night they are now usually

around 105 and sometimes even 57.

So, I call this a way to manage the blood sugar. It has been a lot of

experimentation since last August with the first month being a real trial. We

started out with my target blood sugar at 125 and whenever my blood sugar got to

around 140 I would start to get hot and dizzy. If my blood sugar went to around

120 I would get very, very dizzy. That is because my body was used to being in

the 200-400's.

Now my target is 115 and I feel fine until it goes to about 90.

I now also know that my body cannot go without that little bit of insulin each

hour. Sometimes at night after a shower I forget to put the unit back on and

the next morning my blood sugar is around 250 again.

Hope this helps.

Janet Sample

Re: It's official--diabetes

Janet, I am joining this conversation late, but can you tell me how MELAS

diabetee is differrent and how it is treated? I have MELAS, this year I was

in

the hospital for a month with Asthma, Bronchitis, then with the steroids I

ended up with a blood sugar of 500. Naturally, they gave me insulin until I

was

weaned off the steroids 6 weeks later. I am a little concerned that I

eventually will become diabetic, any tips greatly appreciated. This little

infection

set me way back. I was in a rehab hospital for 6 weeks and now at home with

PT/OT.

Thanks

Martha