Out of control bg

[cdmcbride]

My 7 year old daughter is a type 1 diabetic diagnosed last October.  We are only in target (130) about 15% of the time.  As soon as we think we have control - something happens and sugars go high.  A1C's have been 8.5; however, the last two months have been so out of control that I worry about her future health.

A question.. last eve, we went out to Chuckee Cheese.  She ate one small piece of pizza, small piece of cake and 1/4 cup of ice cream and ran around playing hard for 5 hours.

Before dinner(6:00 p.m.) 234 bg;  had 7 units of novolog;  at

10:00 p.m. reading was 231;  we did not give insulin because we thought it might be adrenaline.  

At 1:00 a.m. the bg was 298; gave 2 units of novolog.

At 7:00 a.m. bg was at 266.  

I have been warned of pizza because it takes long to digest; however, after insulin and hours in the night it is still affecting her?  

Dawn

[JDRF-Team-CDB]

Hi Dawn,
Pizza can be tough to estimate, more because the carb content can vary so much from slice to slice and pizza to pizza. But although I'm just a mom like you, and not a doctor, it sounds like it's not just pizza causing high blood sugar.

You didn't say what sort of long-lasting insulin she's on-- is it Novalin? Or Lantus/glargine? If you haven't tried Lantus (aka glargine) yet, I would strongly recommend talking to your endo about it. My 16-year-old has been on it for about a year, and it really helped stabilize her numbers. Her doc says she has seen a lot of improvement with many patients on Lantus.

You may also want to talk to your doc about the pump. That might provide the tighter control you need.

Hang in there, and don't worry too much.... she's young yet, and has time to get this under better control.

[JDRF Team SGG]

By the way, YES, pizza takes a long time to digest. I find that if I eat pizza at dinner I almost always have a rise in glucose while I am sleeping. The fats combined with the carbs delay the digestion time. It is good to know this so you can learn to adjust. I find it enough of a problem that I actually rarely eat pizza. The only way to perfect the control would be to do a blood test in the middle of the night and to then adjust with extra insulin. French fries are the other fat-laden carbohydrate that I notice digests equally slowly. I tend to avoid both of these foods most of the time just because I know that my insulin dose is going to be guesswork because digestion is not completed at bedtime.