Holding Steady

Eight months after being diagnosed with diabetes, Karl's holding steady, and, if anything, his blood glucose numbers are getting better.

We partly attribute this to our policy of adjusting his dose of long-acting Lantus insulin from time to time, with a rule of thumb, "If two doses give about the same results, give him the higher one, to take some of the load off his pancreas." The less hard his pancreas has to work, the longer it lasts (our goal is "forever"), and the more it can take up the slack if Karl has more cabs than expected. He was down as low as six units, we're at seven now, and we'll likely inch it back up to eight.

Because Karl's autism means that he likes his routine, he's settled into both a dietary and a daily medical routine very well. Because he doesn't pine for treats or change his mind about what he wants for dinner based on what's going on around him, it's very easy to stick with things that work. He's even very good-natured about going into Dairy Queen and getting one or two of their low-carb ice cream bars (the only things in the store that don't have inconceivable levels of sugar).

Everything would be golden if my employer, Citrix, hadn't shifted from an excellent Blue Cross health-insurance plan to a ghastly Cigna one. I'm thinking I'm going to have to buy supplemental insurance to maintain a decent level of care.

Here's Karl's blood sugar graph from the last month:

Karl at the Prom

Karl had a good time at the Special Ed Prom, though as usual he wore his headphones to cut down on the loud music. The local paper used a photo of Karl, so he's famous again.

On the diabetes front, he's relentlessly sticking to his routine and to his accustomed diet (peanut butter and honey sandwiches on reduced-calorie bread for every meal, and chicken nuggets for every meal but breakfast). We'd like him to have more variety! This keeps his carbs down, though.

He's starting to look forward to Atkins shakes as a snack, and since these have practically no carbs, they're something he can have without insulin. Most of the other no-carb foods (cheese, hot dogs, meat, etc.) he doesn't like until they're made into something like pizza, which sorta defeats the purpose!