Although finding out that our son had Type 1 Diabetes was devastating, part of was actually a relief in that it was Type 1 and not Type 2. Now, I know that sounds awful, but he was a 12 year old kid, and with Type 1 Diabetes you have to watch more what you eat, with Type 2 Diabetes you can eat really whatever you want as long as you cover the carbs with insulin. OK, maybe it was a bit selfish on my part, but when he was first diagnosed and I didn't know what it meant, I was so worried that I wouldn't be able to make him the right foods or that I would have to figure out totally different meals so he could eat. I'm really not a great cook, and I don't have too many things that I even know how to cook, and so the idea of having to find all new meals and recipes to make terrified me!
Even the night our son was diagnosed, my husband still didn't understand, and so he was freaking out our other kids telling them that they couldn't have much sugar ever again, and he even made the 9 year old cry by telling him that we probably wouldn't be having what we call "breakfast for dinner" ever again because of the large amounts of sugar in syrup. (I guess pancakes and syrup are pretty important to little brother.)
Anyway, we soon learned that while it was a good idea to eat a nutritious diet, having Type 1 Diabetes did not mean you had to go on a low sugar diet or stop eating the things that you normally eat. This gave me some sort of hope. Now to deal with the next issue. How to know how much insulin to give and when?
With Type 1 Diabetes, it is a matter of covering the carbs. It depends on how much carbohydrates you eat to figure out how much insulin you will need. With insulin, it is measured in units, and it also depends on what they call a insulin to carb ratio. This was all part of him being in the hospital. While he was there, they were monitoring his blood sugar and figuring out how his body reacted to the insulin, so then they could decide on an appropriate insulin:carb ratio.
So, right now, our son was given the ratio of 1:25. This meant that for every 25 carbs he ate, he would need 1 unit of insulin. OK, so great, but how did we figure out the carbs?
At the hospital it was pretty easy as they had this menu specific for diabetics and it told you all the carbs next to the item so you would know when you ordered it. That was great here, but what about when we got home? I understood how you could look on the side of packaged foods to find the carbs, but what about foods that didn't have a box, or would we never be able to eat at someone else's house again or go out to eat? And what if I didn't do it right? What if I figured it wrong and gave him the wrong amount of insulin? This was a lot of responsibility, and this was just a small part. I hadn't even started stressing about how I was going to have to learn to give him the shots or poke him for his blood sugar as the hospital told us we would all have to learn to do.
Slowly, but surely, we began learning about carbs and how we needed to be careful by not only looking at the side of a packaged food product for the carbs, but for how much of the food equaled to one serving. We learned that a lot of foods are calculated by weight or volume, so we would have to start measuring his foods to figure out the carbs.
The hospital was great and gave us a lot of resources. (Of course all of them did not come cheap!) They gave us so many books on diabetes and then we got several that included carb counting charts and information on how many carbs are in most of the common food people eat. We even got a nutritional guide to all the fast food places and restaurants so that if we wanted to eat out we would know exactly what carbs were in all the foods.
There was some confusion though. We did notice that the charts didn't always match up. While one book said a banana was 17 carbs, another one said it was 27. Or some would say this much for a "small" apple or "medium" whatever, and it would leave you wondering what really was considered small, medium, or large?
This all seemed worrisome to me if I messed up then I would be giving him too much or too little insulin and what would happen, but we were soon to learn there was a whole other thing to consider when deciding how much insulin to give, and there was another part of insulin called "correction" insulin that we were going to learn about.
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