With Halloween falling in the middle of the week, I ended up having a quieter night than usual, staying at home and handing out candy to the local trick-or-treaters. While this meant lower alcohol consumption and complete control over my food intake, it was still hard to figure out how to dose insulin for the different types of candy I was eating. Here's some of the Halloween lessons I've learned over the years:
Round carb amounts for easy memorization: I looked at the wrappers of the candy I thought I would eat, and remembered a rough carbohydrate total for each. For example, there's a little under 9g of carbs per "Fun Size" snickers bar. 9g is not significantly different from 10g (0.17 units of insulin for my ratio) and it's easier to remember 10, so I just remember 10. This seems insignificant until you are figuring out a dose for 5 "Fun Size" snickers, 2 Reese's cups, ten pieces of kandy korn, and two Kit-Kat bars.
Test about every hour if eating a lot: This makes it easy to catch mistakes before they multiply. If you forgot to count a couple pieces of candy, or underestimated how many ounces of punch you drank, you'll find out soon and be able to correct. Otherwise, one mistake early in the night means you've just spent five hours at 350, even though you dosed correctly the rest of the night.
If you're pumping, don't bolus too often: This is especially tempting if you are a new pumper. Although it seems very attractive to take a bolus for 6g every time you eat 5 pieces of kandy korn, you will most likely end up overcorrecting. Instead, keep a rough tally of what you eat and bolus every 10-15 minutes.
And as always, try to remember to do a test before you fall asleep. We're not perfect, and despite following these tips I was still 274 at bedtime. A quick correction dose saved me from 8 hours of being high.
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