Yes. No. Maybe. Well, let me see. Yes, that one little question gets that many answers at once. That question, Is that a good number? is so irrelevant if there is no other information given.
80 is a great number upon waking up. 80 is not so great 1 hour after eating with over 3 units of insulin on board. 80 is not so great for a little one sound asleep at night with a plus/minus standard deviation allowed on meters and on basal rates. Our basal rate deviation that is acceptable to our endo is plus/minus 30 points. A basal rate is set right if my son does not go over 30 points from our starting number or below 30 from our starting numbers. So an 80 in the middle of the night could possibly go to 50 and still be in good basal range but in dangerous blood glucose range. That same 80 in the middle of the night could possibly got to 110 and still be in good basal range and an even healthy blood glucose range. That’s where the maybe comes in. And that’s where the tired mama comes in too.
I get stuck in the middle of the night if I see a number like 80. Do I treat it as a low? Or go back to bed and hope for the best? I never hope for the best, the real plan of action is I will continue to test my son every 1/2 hour while he sleeps to see where that number is going. But if I did decide to treat that 80 with some carbs, and if it were going up to 110 on it’s own, then my adding extra carbs could land us in the 190 range, which is a not a good number for waking up.
Now let’s talk about that 190. Diabetes experts, the ones that get paid, unlike the mom experts that I confer with on a daily basis, say that a good number for 2 hours after eating is 50 points higher than where you started. So if my son started his meal at 140 and I check him at the 2 hour point and I got a 190 then I would be thrilled. 190 2 hours after eating with about 1.5 hours of insulin left to work should give us a nice smooth landing into our decent blood glucose range by the next check.
Ah, 190 at night. Another one that gets a maybe. 190 is a bit high UNLESS my son was very active during the day and I know he is going to have a delayed drop from the previous day. Sometimes it takes 12 hours for a low to hit after an extremely active day. And yet again, another night where I check a couple more times every 1/2 hour to determine what is going on. Sticking at 190 overnight requires a correction (insulin), but dropping means it is okay for me to head back to bed. Unless of course it’s a big drop like 190 to 100 in 1/2 hour. A drop like that is NEVER good.
300, 400, 500, HI, 50, 40, 30, 20, and LO are NEVER good numbers. It’s those numbers in between from say 80 to 190, all 110 of them that leave me wondering if it indeed is a good number.
I wish there was something more concrete to this disease that weighs like a ton of bricks on my heart.