Resetting T1D

A day with T1D can be exciting, tiring, confusing, complicated and simple. You can have all the luck in the world or you can just be down right unlucky. Even though you can work at trying to make things perfect it can go all wrong with a simple miscalculation. Some days you will get to the end and just wish it would stop and go away.

As we all know getting it to go away is impossible but with a mindset it is possible to reset your T1D so that you start with a clean slate. Well I can anyway, if this helps for anyone else then that is great.

Some days I will eat too much stuff that will have adverse effects on my BSL, some days the stress of life takes hold and effects my BSL, some days things are just out of control and some days are great but the one thing that I tell myself is that there is one constant and that is the fact that at night I will go to sleep and not have any food intake for at least 6-8 hours. Being on my Medtronic pump this allows anything that I have eaten or done in the previous day to be utilised in my system. It means that the only insulin onboard is my basal rate. There is nothing else that is having an effect. 

I may wake up high from what had happened the day before but the simplistic approach of not having anything else in my system usually means the correction works quickly to bring be back into line for a fresh start. It will be similar if I wake low. I know that there isn't anything else that will need to balculated into the glucose correction just the simple process of having it come back up to start again. Don't get me wrong though things can still go wrong by overdoing the correction but that just comes down to self control.

So all in all this is what I tell myself or allowing myself the ability to reset my T1D. It allows me to put aside everything that happened the day before and only focus on what is to come. Mistakes will still be made or bad days will happen but I will always know the next morning I can start again.

A passion is found

I know I have only been writing this blog for 6 months but it has ignited something inside me to want to help spread the awareness of what T1D is, what it is like to look after a small child with it and to try and let people know they are not alone. I find myself at the end of the day looking through out my experiences to understand what's next.

Through this blog I have now reached at least one person in over 20 countries around the world. Seeing as one of my main reasons for creating this blog was to try and make sure at least one other person didn't feel as alone as I did growing up I think I have over exceeded my goal. This has ignited a fire within me to continue to help.

From this blog, and a little marketing on my behalf I have spawned 2 other opportunities -

1. Addressing the Diabetic Educators of Queensland on the benefit of technology through blogging in my life with T1D. In other words what has it allowed me to do personally and how it has allowed me to reach others in the same situation as me. Hopefully I will be able to express to the educators how important it is for all T1D's to have communication with other T1's and maybe get my blog out to more T1's who may want to know they are not alone.

2. This is the big one. After having my blog read by the team in at Medtronic my daughter and I have been accepted in the advocacy program. Seeing as moving to my pump some 8 years ago changed everything and is still something that I am great full for it is a great pleasure to share my stories and experiences to a wider audience. I believe that the government needs to be able to recognise that insulin pump and CGM therapy is critical to long term health benefits and cost savings for the government in the long term.

My advocacy started on Friday with a morning of interviews, filming, photo's and meeting a great team of passionate people. They are passionate about people's health and passionate about making a difference to people's lives. I look forward to this journey and will keep you informed as more opportunities pop up.

To anyone that has taken the time to read my humble words I thank you and I hope that I have either helped you know that your not alone or shed some light as to what your child may be feeling but unable to express yet.

If there is ever a subject that you would like to hear about please let me know by commenting on my Facebook or on these posts.

I thank you again for allowing me to find something that I get fulfilment out of.

Just when you thought you had covered everything....

With a life of T1D you count everything, you monitor your BSL, you monitor and counteract the impact your excercise has, you make sure that anything you do or don't do doesn't have a negative impact. Now along with everyday tasks this would seem like enough but it isn't.

Tonight after a well controlled day for both myself and my daughter I proceeded to test her prior to her final bottle before bed. I went through the usual process of making sure her figure was clean and entered the BSL strip into the meter to activate it to the point it would ask for the blood to be added to the strip. Unfortunately this is where things became problamatic. The meter would no longer identify the test strip and hence would not turn on.

I could activate the meter manually however this just proves the battery wasn't dead and it only allows you to check the memory which in this case was useless to me.

Now as usual you always have a backup meter or 2 which I do have however the one thing that I hadn't counted on was the test strips in both of my backup meters being expired. In this case we were using the Accu Check mobile meters as the backup and not really considering that the strips would have an expiry date I thought everything would be fine however I was wrong again.

Keeping in mind all of this happened at 6.30 pm on a Saturday night (no chemists open). I had a back up back, back up plan which if everything else fails then we would both share my meter however I needed to check one last thing. Upon driving to the chemist to triple check I noticed that it was closed however there seemed to be a staff meeting going on. Sitting out the front of the chemist I decided to call them to see if anyone would actually answer. Luck was on my side as they did answer and the allowed me to come in to get some supplies. With the advancement of the technology in the mobile meter with having the cartridge strips rather than the individual strips was something I hadn't experienced before. Time to stick with the individual strips as a back up.

I suppose the moral of today's story is to make sure everything is checked on a regular basis and have back ups for your back up plans. Today I was lucky however another day I may not be.