WHAT IS T1D?
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T1D (Type 1 Diabetes) is an Auto-Immune Disease where your immune system attacks the insulin producing cells in your pancreas until they no longer produce insulin at all. It's very different from Type 2 Diabetes in many ways. Type 1 cannot be prevented or cured and leaves you depending on insulin injections for the rest of your life.
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WHO HERE HAS T1D?
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My son was diagnosed with Type 1 when he was 19 months old.
He had been sick for a couple of days and it got to the point where he was almost comatose. He had entered a stage called Diabetic Ketoacidosis, which is deadly if not treated. His sugar levels were above 500 and his A1C was above 14 (a non-diabetic would be much much lower than that). It was so bad that if we had waited even one more day to get him to the ER he would have died.
This was at the beginning of the COVID-19 scares back in March of 2019. The lockdown began while we were at the hospital, so this is why we waited to bring him in. He was airlifted to the children's hospital and placed in the PICU. We spent a week in the hospital learning about his disease and the new challenges our lives would be facing.
We just celebrated his 3rd birthday and he's doing great!
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WHAT IS MY GOAL SHARING T1D INFO AND RESOURCES?
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I hope that our experiences and knowledge can help other T1Ds or T1D parents to cope with and manage their lives.
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WHAT ARE SOME OF THE RESOURCES I HAVE FOR T1D?
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Early on, we used to use a little binder for recording and tracking sugar levels and insulin injections while we were getting used to how much to dose and what times we did it, or trends overnight (let me tell you now, overnight trends are VERY important to know). I created my own custom binder sheets to fit our needs and I have those all available and editable on my T1D website (linked below).
There's a section with carbohydrate counts for different types of foods, it's in the form of a one-sheet for easy calculations. We have it on our fridge for easy access, and if we're out and about we just hop on my website and grab that info really quick from there. It's a great resource for carb counting and I've done the work for you (feel free to request food items to be added to the list, you can email me for that via the contact section).
There are some recipes with carb counts and I'll be adding more in the future, so keep an eye out! We tend to eat pretty healthy, but we don't skimp on the fun foods either and we don't feed him anything special, he just eats what we eat!
Web link for the T1D resources:
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UPDATED • AUGUST 06, 2021
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