Monday, November 21, 2005

Carb-insulin chart

In order to make life easier when figuring out insulin dosages, I put together this spreadsheet in OpenOffice.org Calc, a free, open source office suite that is an extremely capable alternative to the proprietary Microsoft © Office suite. I'm making the spreadsheet publicly available for download in both formats, so users of both suites will be able to use them, however I highly encourage you to check out the OpenOffice.org suite.

Download OpenOffice.org version
Download MS © Office version

Whenever we have a change in her dosages, I just plug in her new numbers, and print. The chart is very easy to use. just plug in your target blood sugar, sensitivity factor, and carbs per unit numbers, and the chart will calculate your carb dose, and corrective dose. It is based on the formula we use for Tori as follows:

corrective dosage units = (blood sugar - target blood sugar) / sensitivity

total dose = carb dose + corrective dose

Hope someone finds it useful...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi..., I'm a fellow blogger (The [Only] Man of the House) that stumbled onto your site via RebelDad. My youngest daughter was actually diagnosed with hyperinsulinism at birth - the exact opposite of diabetes and far more rare - and we've been dealing with that and a host of other medical problems since. For this reason, and a few others, I decided to start doing some pro bono work for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation here in New Haven. I recently put togther a video of their annual Walk to Cure Diabetes for them to use to help get more sponsors for future walks. A friend of mine who did the narration, posted something about it on his blog. If you're interested, check it out here (the link to the actual video is at the end of this entry):

http://www.geofffox.com/MT/archives/2005/11/17/sometimes_you_just_get_lucky.php

If nothing else, I thought you would like to know I care about these children and the work this foundation is doing, and I'm trying to do whatever I can to help.

Take care.

Sincerely,
Chris Kirby

Anonymous said...

Hi Diabetes Dad your heading this post was quite thought provoking. I have been looking at sites to do with child diabetes being a parent myself a few times over and a member of various child support groups I often find myself needing a little help with childrens issues that can crop up from time to time. I recently found a site that is chockas with links on the subject of child diabetes It takes a little searching through the many directories that it has but some of the links are great and have helped me heaps, beats searching through the search engines. Anyway Luv your blog keep it up!

Anonymous said...

hi, my name is Eva my email address is eva157@yahoo.com
My 7 year old grandson is a diabetic, we found out when he was 13 months old. Its been a battle every since. I have lots of questions I would like to ask some, so if anyone has time and would like to email me about type 1, please do so.
I want to know how low does the blood sugar count go down for each unit of nph

Anonymous said...

Hi, I am an insulin dependent diabetic (type 1) and was diagnosed at two years of age, 28 years ago. I wanted to email to say that the developments in diabetes care have been phenomenol in the last thirty years and I am sure they will continue to. I would recommend that you ensure that when your daughter begins to take care of her dosages when she is a bit older, you make sure that she is educated properly at the time - by the hospital staff and yourself and with the latest information. My insulin type changed in my teens and this has caused a number of problems. However I am currently on a Diabetes Course run by my hospital, called DAFNE and it works with my insulin regime fantastically. I was not properly educated when I started caring for myself and have had a long time when my health was poor as a result. It's brilliant that children like your daughter will have better opportunities for education - but do be willing to go and pursue better care at different hospitals to make sure this happens. I have changed hospital and my health as a result of the specialist care team has been amazing at the new hospital. Please don't feel alone in it - there are many of us out there and even though I have had a bit of a tough time, my long term health prospects are looking fine as my eyes and feet etc are absolutely fine so far, and my recent HBA1C rates are fine.

I would advise you getting in touch with others in the same situation - both for yourselves and for your daughter. It will help both your and your daughters potential feeling of loneliness in the situation. You aren't, and please know there are others out there who know what the reality of living with diabetes are.

Please do note though, different insulins will work differently with different carbs and with different people, so I would always advise readers of your Blog to check their insulin ratios with their health care professionals, as theirs will be different to your daughters.

I wish you every success with the medication for your daughter - with the right help and support she will be absolutely fine, just remember to fight for the help if you don't feel you are getting what you need in terms of information or support.

Best wishes,

Fay