That’ll work… Provided its been a few hours since you last ate so that any carbs remaining from breakfast aren’t going to screw up this test.
Sometimes this disease blows. Majorly. I am having one of those days.
Well, it’s true that fat content will slow down glucose absorption and often give you a smaller blood sugar spike, but it would surprise me greatly if a diabetic person could consume 90g of carbohydrates in ice cream form, and see a result of 100 Mg/dL an hour later.
It is possible that your home meter is miscalibrated or giving bad results. That is actually just about the only explanation I can think of as to how you could be seeing results like that at home but failing your GTT.
True, maybe it is a miscalibrated meter, or a low starting point (I don’t think Silver Fire gave a “before” reading). Or maybe its something else?
Man! I’m sorry I missed this thread. You had a 90 bg before going in, which is perfectly normal, and it spiked high enough during the test for them to tell you that you had gestational? The test is a pain, but can you take your meter in, show them the readings, and ask them to run that test again?
I remember my diagnosis, where my 3 hour test came back at 200. I was able to contol mine with diet, so insulin injections are not always needed. If they are, insulin syringes have a very small needle: or you might be able to get a pen.
You’ll need to be careful afterwards, though: women who were diagnosed with GD have a 40% greater chance of developing type 2 later in life. That’s why I went crazy on the weight loss.
Let us know how it goes: I’ll be in prayer for you and the baby.
I didn’t take a pre-ice cream reading. I fast between 80 and 90 though and I hadn’t eaten between dinner and the 11pm sweets binge.
Ann, I’ve read a 75% increase of risk over the next 8 years but with my family history, it feels like I’m doomed either way.
I hope to get in with my OB on Tuesday and I will have the meter I’ve been using (as well as more specific documentation, like a food diary with associated values just because not all of the numbers in this thing’s history are mine, first of all, and second because there’s no way I’m going to remember what was going on with each of the readings) in addition to asking for specific lab values and discussing where such a discrepancy might come from. I also outright refuse to take insulin unless I am confident with the diagnosis (new meter for a week, no question of its accuracy, whatever)
Also, re: calibration. It’s possible, obviously, but I’ve had dinner with my parents and stayed over longer than I anticipated so just wound up testing with my dad’s other meter. So what are the odd they’re both inaccurate? Especially if my dad hasn’t noticed that his own tests are coming out all wonky.
OK, so your numbers don’t look too “diabetic” then at all.
It’d be unlikely, certainly. Have you tried using a control solution on your meter to see what that gives?
What do you mean?
Your meter should have come with something known as a control solution (or if it didn’t you can probably buy some from the pharmacy). Put a test strip into your meter, and instead of sticking yourself and using your blood, put a drop of the control solution onto the test strip. See what result it gives. The side of the control solution bottle should give you a range of acceptable values for the control test – if the value you get doesn’t jive with the numbers on the side of the control solution bottle, there’s something wrong.
Oh, neat. I’ll have to ask my dad about that since it’s his meter. 
I’ll do that today before I get all crazy with the food diary for no reason and stuff.
I will accept a diagnosis. I just want to be sure, especially if they start talking about insulin.
Well, I’d start with the food diary anyway, since it can’t hurt (but no need to go crazy!). And if they do confirm you as having GD, its very likely, given the numbers you’ve posted that you’ll do just fine with some modifications to your diet, rather than needing insulin. If its decided that you do need insulin, well, a) its not the end of the world, b) its only temporary, and c) its really not as bad as it sounds. Trust me on that one!
I dreaded even thinking about my diabetes for a while, since I knew that as a T1.5 a time would come where I’d need insulin, and I dreaded it. Now that its happened, I feel better than ever. Although I can’t wait to be let loose with my pump because those three remaining beta cells are getting annoying!
I know insulin is a good thing when needed and I’m not worried about needles or whatever. My concern with insulin is that they’re wrong and I wind up in a hypoglycemic crisis. Scary.
I’m just saying, I need to be absolutely confident with the diagnosis before I will accept any treatment beyond “Hey, put down the ice cream and get off your ass.”
I dreaded insulin until I read up on it versus all the other drugs out there. There’s a LOT of drugs for diabetes, and a lot of 'em are scary - either bad side effects, or they’ve only been out for a couple years and who are not thoroughly tested.
Insulin is only scary because of the needles. Once you get over that, it’s a wonder drug.
Fair enough, and yeah, hypoglycemic crises are scary. Never had one happen to me yet, but have had scarily low blood sugar levels when I’ve accidentally got insulin straight into a blood vessel, or something crazy like that (testing at 25-30 mg/dl is not something I ever like doing!)
Athena, I know that insulin’s probably the safest drug, and really, I knew it was inevitable. It was the needles that scared me, but now I’ve been using this for a while, it hurts less than the finger-sticks to be honest.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a hypoglycemic episode, but I agree that they’re freaking terrifying. Not least because your brain stops working. If your blood sugar’s 30 or something, you know something is wrong, and there’s something simple you could do to resolve it, but you can’t figure out WHAT.
ETA: One thing about blood glucose crashes is knowing (and having people around who know) what won’t help. Ice cream is useless, for reasons Angua alluded to upthread: the fat retards the absorption of the sugar, and if your sugar is in the 30s or 40s there’s no time for that. Chocolate bars don’t do much good either.
Quite. The first time it happened to me, I’d just bolused insulin for a meal. Insulin went in, and there was blood when I removed the pen needle. Thinking nothing of it, I ate my meal. 20 minutes into eating, I had a very cold and “prickly” head. Thought something was up but that I was having a high. Left it a minute before realizing that checking my blood sugar was a good plan. Ended up testing at around 30. :eek: And the next thing I remember is a couple of empty juice boxes around me.
Quite. Best thing is juice, full-sugar soda, glucose tablets, or just plain table sugar.
I keep jelly beans at my desk, because, while they are pretty much pure sugar, I hate the taste fo them; thus they don’t tempt me.
Walgreens and WalMart both sell glucose that are quite tasty; I can’t help but think that is a mistake. My nieces have been known to eat them like candy, and that’s not what I need.
Angua, after getting out of a low-blood sugar episode, how do you feel, physically? I ask because, when my blood sugar goes very, very low, I feel achy for the rest of the day, as if I had just run ten miles.
I find that I’ve lost the taste for most sweet stuff now anyway, so I don’t find them particularly tempting. Even stuff like Cliff bars, (I use the mini ones if I’m working out) I find I’m not particularly tempted by.
It depends on how low and how soon I catch it. If I’m down to the 50s and catch it early, I’m fine for the rest of the day. Even if I get down to 40 or so, I’ll feel a little achey for a couple of hours but be fine later. The ones in the 30s however, wipe me out for a good couple of hours and leave me drained. But even then, its not something I can’t work through. The ones that really get to me are the overnight ones, where I’ve basically stayed low overnight, my liver’s battled the low all night and I still wake up in the 60s. Days like that, I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.
Funny, like Angua, the sweet stuff doesn’t really tempt me at all. Jelly beans, hard candy, glucose tabs… I like the taste but they’re definitely medicine for me now. Not at all tempting.
Lows have never been particularly debilitating for me. Don’t get me wrong - they’re not fun - but whether or not they leave me feeling bad is a crapshoot. Sometimes I get into the 60s and seem to feel it for hours afterward; sometimes I get to 45, correct, and feel fine for the rest of the day. If anything, the highs seem to bug me more. If I get up above 190 or so, I just feel sorta buzzy and that seems to stick around for a few hours.
What scares me the most are the lows I don’t detect. There are no clear symptoms! Sure, if I’m having a great day, and suddenly I feel tired and shaky, I go “whoooaaaa, I’m going low.” But if I’m under the weather - sick, or tired - or exercising (which makes you tired and sweaty, both symptoms of low blood sugar AND things that happen normally when you’re working out) - and I go low, it’s really hard to detect. I didn’t sleep all night the other night (crisis at work) and ended up at 44 in a department store later that day and had no idea. Thank God my CGMS started yelling at me. Everything was OK - I go nowhere without a a ton of sugar - but it was not an experience I want to repeat.
I woke up one night when I was pregnant with MiniWhatsit feeling a little out of sorts, and then realized something was wrong when I couldn’t remember how to check my blood sugar. MrWhatsit helped me out, and we soon discovered that my blood glucose was at a personal all-time record low of 26, yes, that’s 26. Orange juice consumption ensued and I felt much better after about half an hour.
I found that the glucose tabs really helped me, because in the throes of hypoglycemia, I had a really, really hard time putting the brakes on and not eating everything in sight. Your body is screaming at you to eat, eat, eat, eat now! Eat everything! So if I had a nice little set amount that I was supposed to take, e.g. three glucose tabs, I could just take that and it was much easier for me.
The fact that we cannot reliably detect low blood sugar before it is almost too late is something I’m always having to explain to my (uneducated, mid-70s) father. He’s always insisting that I test too much, that I should just be able to tell by the way I feel that I’m going low, and doesn’t understand (maybe cannot understand, maybe simply refuses to understand) that there are things about this disease that are not under my control. From my diabetes education class when I was first diagnosed, I learned that the more often one has gone low, the more acclimated one becomes to it, and thus the harder it is to detect the mid-lows before it is too late (i.e., before one becomes altered mentally and cannot figure out what to do).
He thinks I should be able to will my way through a low-blood-sugar episode too. :rolleyes: