Naked Pancreas!

Reyna over at Beta Buddies started the Naked Pancreas Challenge and I wanted to weigh in.  I haven't blogged in weeks so I figured this was a quick, easy one to do!


1. What kind of insulin management mode do you use?
Taylar has been using the OmniPod since May 10th of this year...the day after her 8th birthday.  Some present, huh?



2. How often do you inject/change pump sites?
We change the pod every 2-3 days.  Usually we go a full 3.

3. What type (s) of insulin do you use?
Novolog

4. What are your basal settings?
It took forever to figure them out and there is still tweaking that goes on, but for the moment she's at:
12am - 5am -  .45 u/hr

5am-10am - .40

10am - 8pm - .35

8pm - 10pm - .65

10pm - 12am - .60

It has taken quite a while and a lot of sleepless nights to get her overnight rates to where they should be.  She was constantly in the 200s at midnight check but this has taken care of it....for now.

5. What are your correction factors ?

During the day 1:80

At night 1:140 - This was changed a little while ago from 1:90 because after the corrected highs at midnight, she was dropping too low at 3am check.  The 1:140 is working better.  Ah, the joys of it all, huh?


6. What are your meal ratios ?
She starts and ends the day with the same ratios...

12am - 11:30am - 1:15 Breakfast & morning snack


11:30am - 1:30pm -  1:30 Lunch

1:30 - 4:00pm - 1:25 After school snack (if she has one)


4pm - 12am - 1:15 Dinner and bedtime snack



7. What do you do for activity and/or PE?
This past summer was the biggest challenge with just starting on the OmniPod and all that summer swimming!  Taylar could basically eat what she wanted on the days we were at the lake and in the water constantly.  Then at night she would always drop low when I checked her at 11pm or 12am though.  After 2 nights of that we did a -15% temp basal for 5 hours overnight and it worked perfectly.  The "lag effect" is definitely something we deal with a lot.  A couple of preset temp basals we have are:

Bike rides: -30% for duration of the ride
Dance: -20% for one hour
Soccer Practice:  -25% for one hour
Soccer Games: - 20% for one hour
Swimming (and bounce house/maze craze type places): -50% for duration

Taylar has PE at 9am this year so she usually tests after it.  Where it is so early in the day and so close to eating breakfast we haven't had any problems with lows which is a good thing.  Plus, her morning snack time is at 10:45, about one hour after PE ends. 


8. How do you manage Pizza, Macaroni and Cheese, or any other "difficult to manage" foods?
Pizza, pizza, oh how we love thee.  Taylar loves pizza.  Who doesn't?  I remember reading about pizza when she was first diagnosed and wondering what they heck the big deal was.  Well, I sure found out first hand.  Now that I get it, we use the extended bolus feature on her pump.  Bolus 35g carbs (depending) per slice giving her 50% now and extending 50% over 4 hours.  We just did this the other day when she had pizza at a party for lunch and she was 90 before bed! Yipee!  If we have pizza for dinner, however, I add a unit to the calculated bolus from the pump and then continue with the 50/50 extended.

Pizza is the worst, but we also extend on ice cream.  Usually 50/50 over 2 hours takes care of it. 

9. How do you prefer to manage your logs/data?

Well, I have an on again, off again, relationship with Taylar's "frog log".  I'm sure you know what I mean right?  I have about 4 of them from the hospital and I do prefer to do it the old fashioned way and just write things down.  We also download her pump to the computer and can look at it that way as well.


And that's Taylar's naked pancreas!