1/1 Jenks AMPS 99 +3 81 +6 78 PMPS 131 +7 121 plus 2017 year in review

12/31

Happy New Year everyone! May 2018 have happy, healthy kitties and good blood sugars in store for you all!

I'm a little wary of this morning's number. Though he spent pretty much all yesterday in the 80s, both yesterday's numbers and this morning's AMPS are elevated a bit over how he's been performing lately. I'll be on the lookout for signs that we reduced too early when we should've given the new insulin a chance first.

2017 YEAR IN REVIEW



Normally I include three graphs: an AM Average, a PM Average, and a 24-hr blood sugar average. This year, they all look pretty much alike, with the 24-hr graph being the middle ground among them so I'm including it as the overall representation of the year.

Basically, this graph plots the average daily blood sugar reading (each data point is the sum of all the tests for a given day divided by the number of tests that day) over time and is represented by the green line. I have also overlayed a graph of the amount of insulin he was getting so you can see how dose correlated with blood sugar performance. The insulin dose graph is in grey at the bottom. It is NOT to scale. This year we were at a maximum of 12U and a minimum of 6.25U, which we are at currently.

It's always tough to find a take-home lesson from Jenks' graphs. He was his swingy self for another year and the graphs bears this out with the characteristic peaks and valleys. It looks like we were successful in keeping his numbers, for the most part, under 200, even at the expense of fighting our way up in dose through the middle of the year.

But the most interesting part of the graph is highlighted by the red arrows. Those are the times this year when OH was away from the house on vacation. You can plainly see the dramatic and immediate impact that has on his BG. One thing I notice is that we're usually working our way up in dose before OH goes on vacation before his vacation cycles kick in and we have to reduce. Not sure if that's meaningful at all, but it's an observation nonetheless.

But unlike those previous vacation cycles, this current one has blessed us by sticking around. I think it's largely responsible for the downward trend line for the year. Seeing it in visual form, though, makes me a little nervous at the few erratic peaks at the end, but I remain hopeful the magic hangs with us as we transition to the new year.




Here's a pretty cool bar chart comparing the number of tests in a particular blood sugar range by year. EDIT: Ooops, I just noticed that the axes on this graph are labeled incorrectly. x-axis should be labeled as "blood sugar range" and not 2014. y-axis should be "number of tests" and not "BG range". I'll fix that later.

Most apparent is that we've made big improvements in blood sugar readings in the 50-99 range compared to previous years. I'm not sure if this is really due to better numbers during the year or more frequent testing in the last month when his numbers have been way down. We've also managed to noticeably reduce the numbers of 150-200 and 200-249 readings compared to the last year. Unfortunately, we reversed a decreasing trend in 250-300, but hopefully that's behind us. I think we're performing where we need to, more or less.

At the end of the day, Jenks is more than a set of numbers. Qualitatively, he's happy, alert, healthy, and lovey. Appetite, drinking, and bathroom habits are all nominal. So we're very thankful that diabetes is the only thing we have to deal with. We can work with that.

After 6778.25 units of insulin and 1716 pokies, that's a wrap on 2017! Bring it on 2018, we're ready for you!

 

That's impressive that you put all of that together. I hope Jenks will keeps surfing in the lower numbers for 2018. The important thing is he is feeling good and happy. Happy New Year!

 

Not sure how I'm feeling about this cycle. It looks like he came down pretty nice through the middle of the day. But the preshot readings are higher than I'd like them to be.

Disturbances tonight meant that he didn't eat dinner food again. It didn't have an effect on his cycle last night, but I'm sure he'd perform better with a little food in him.

I'm going to watch the numbers closely. I'm considering a return to 6.5U to see if we can gently tap these numbers down just a bit. We're in the 5th cycle at this dose, so I'll make the decision either tonight or after tomorrow's AM cycle.

 

Still in the low 100s at the overnight feeding. Hopefully he drops down a bit into AMPS. I think I'll give him one more cycle before deciding on a return to 6.5U.