Saturday, December 4, 2010

Too Scared to Bolus

Yep, you reads that right.
Too scared to bolus.
Let me explain...

Grace had 'Breakfast with Santa' at her elementary school this morning. This consists of a McDonald's pancake and sausage breakfast and orange juice. Yep, you read that right. And pancakes are her favorite, sausage is her favorite and so is the OJ. She never has eaten a McDonald's breakfast before. I searched for the carbs last night and found all my information I needed. So we calculated the carbs she was about to consume and it totaled...

96

Grace usually doesn't eat a meal over 45 - 50 grams of carbs, so both our eyes widened when we saw how much.

She took her blood sugar, a respectable 106.

We inputted the 96 grams of carbs into her OmniPod PDM and it spit out...

8.25 units for the bolus.

8.25 !

Grace and I looked at each other with even more widened eyes. She said 'Mom, that's A LOT of insulin!' I scrolled back to 7.0 and said, there that should be enough - what was I thinking??? and sure enough, bolused her 7.0 units and did an extend for 2/3 of it.

I must have been drinking before breakfast, cause it was pure stupidity and pure ignorance on my part.
The girl was about the drink 8 oz of OJ and eat 2 pancakes.
I knew it would rock her blood sugar.
I knew that she would eat the whole thing.
I knew I should trust the PDM.
I work hard for those basal rates, those I:C ratios, those correction factors.

I figured it out...
I was too scared too bolus.

And it resulted in a blood sugar of 328 exactly 2 hours later,
which needed how many units to bring her down?

Let me ask you again - how many units do you think it took to bring her down within range?
Well, that would be the 1.25 units I was too scared to bolus for!!!

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I hate second guessing myself in situations like that Penny. I always tend to go "light" on the insulin too. "I'm a SAFETY girl!" LOL.

I hope she came down and stayed down nicely for you.

Denise said...

Been there, done that! Kick myself for it later. Knowing how deadly insulin can be if given too much, it makes sense to err on the lower side despite a correct I:C. Better to correct a high then to treat a bad low (at least that is what I think)

Jen said...

Oh Penny..I totally get that! I am AFRAID to give Addison more than 40 carbs. In fact..40 freaks me out. And this is because of the amount of insulin required to cover it. I would have done the same thing as you did..and you know..I would rather have to correct the high then send my boy crashing down!

Anonymous said...

Ah yes...the BIG bolus!!! I too would have done the same thing! I would have assumed the insulin would never act quick enough to catch the OJ and a 106 is close enough to "going low" for us soooo I would have shot it short too! Now we do have McD's on Wednesday nights (Happy Meal after dance) and McD's breakfast at least once a month...so I have a pretty good lock on what McD does to our little D girl! I wouldn't suggest the syrup they give you, we carry the sugar free (or low sugar) syrup with us if we do pancakes! ((hugs)) don't feel too bad though, you can't catch them all!

Karen said...

Yes, a big big bolus is scary!! Very scary. And sometimes it's best to err on the side of less insulin and just correct down later if you have to. Because taking a big bolus and then crashing hard is a much worse situation to be in - especially at Breakfast With Santa!

Alexis Nicole said...

lol at the drinking before breakfast. Sorry you had bolus situation. I always feel like odd man out justices avverage bolus is between 6 and 10! Anyway better safe than sorry. You did good! (oh my email is justicespancreaticavengers@yahoo.com)