Birthday Parties with the 'Betes

Here are some lessons I've learned this first year with Cham's T1 and her attendance at parties. Whether it's birthday party, a holiday class party, or a friend get-together, I now have a few tricks up my sleeve when it comes to these events.

1 - Call the host. I have put myself in the habit of contacting the host to ask what they plan on serving so that I can look up the carbs ahead of time and I can inform Cham of her options before we get there. This typically avoids any negotiations with her because she knows what is going to be there, and if she doesn't like some of the items, I bring her a bag of chips or sliced apples to help add to her meal if she needs them.

2 - Prepare for Unplanned Negotiating. Cham sometimes thinks that she doesn't want the slice of cake, but will change her mind at the last minute. I always tell her, as long as I have already planned it into your insulin shot, you can have it. Unfortunately, she sometimes pouts after her shot because she's regretting not adding the cake. This is when I bring the slice home for her to have with dinner or as a snack if we're still at the party when she needs one. I also tell her to go run around, play, swim, or whatever to earn the extra carbs (for every 30 minutes of strenuous exercise, she earns 15 carbs). If she had the pump, this would be a no brainer - we could simply bolus her when she added more carbs (another reason why we are debating the pump).

3 - Increase insulin a bit. Knowing that Cham is about to eat high fat, sugary foods at a party has taught us to add just a bit extra insulin to her injection. For example today, she wanted the chicken nuggets (9 carbs), BBQ dip (11 carbs), Cheetos (15 carbs), and caramel dip with apples (19 carbs), which brought her to about 54 carbs. Our iphone app (love this diabetes calculator) told us that she needed about 5.2 units - we rounded up to 5.5 units because of the nuggets and dip. We probably could've gone to 6.0, but I feared a "low" because it was a outdoor swimming party and I knew she would be burning carbs.

4 - Expect the "HIGH." No matter what, we always seem to run high on party days. They are very difficult to tackle and we have only come out on top a few times (BG at target). We just do what we know to do, and let it go if her numbers are ridiculous. (Here's where we sing the Annie song...Tomorrow, tomorrow, I luv ya tomorrow, you're only a day away!)