Football Practice + Trampoline Park + Pizza + Cake = A Crap Shoot

Austin rewarding Bo for a low alert.

Austin had a football walk through early in the evening yesterday. Afterwards he and some buddies went to a friend's house for pizza before heading to an indoor trampoline park for a birthday. I knew maintaining Austin's target blood sugar of 120 was going to be extra challenging given the activity and food that was planned for the evening. I hoped the activity would kick in when the pizza high kicked in -- balancing one another.

When Austin left the house for football his blood sugar was 123. By the time he got to his friend's house at 7:15 pm and was ready to eat pizza, his blood sugar was 117. He was off to a good start for the evening. At 8:00 pm he suspended his basal for one hour -- the duration of his time at the trampoline park. When he got back to his friend's house at 9 pm and was ready to eat cake, his blood sugar was 96. He bolused 50 g for the cake, which caused him to drop to 68 at 11 pm. Bo was sleeping and missed this low. We treated the 68, reduced his basal, gave him a peanut butter toast, set our 2 am alarm and went to bed.

I don't know if I turned off the alarm and fell asleep or if it never went off -- but I missed it. I woke at 2:15 am to Bo alerting me. Austin was 85. Thanks to Bo's alert, I was able to treat Austin's low before it became dangerous and reduce his basal rate. As a result, he woke at 6:45 am nearly on target with a blood sugar of 122. By 7:30 am it was 105 and at 9:30 am it was 121.

It's always a crap shoot for us when it comes to balancing the effects of physical activity on blood sugar when coupled with high carb and fat foods like pizza, which causes high blood sugar hours after consumption. Overall things worked out well this time. Bo missed the low at 68 but we were all awake to catch it. He caught the low of 85 at 2 am when we missed the alarm.

Managing Type 1 with a DAD is truly is a team effort. We are not perfect, nor is Bo but together we do a good job keeping the boy's blood sugar in safe ranges. It's hard to imagine taking care of T1 without Bo's help.