Prebolus: v. To give a bolus (short burst) of insulin given via shot or insulin pump prior to a meal, often given 10-30 minutes before, depending on the person.

Dawn Phenomenon: n. The lovely thing that happens when you wake up and your body releases it’s own glucose for energy to get you going since you haven’t had anything to eat since the night before, just in diabetics, we don’t make our own insulin to combat it, and it’s hard as all get out to figure out how much to bolus to keep us from going high since it can vary from day to day.

Prebolusing is something that I have had to really try my best to stick to since becoming pregnant. If I don’t, my blood sugars go even whackier than they did before. Which prebolusing wasn’t that big of a problem before in the first trimester because I either didn’t have to bolus at all or I would be bolusing very little to cover the meal… if you want to call it a meal. But now that I’m in the second trimester and all of the icky morning sickness isn’t there, hunger that I didn’t have then has come back full force, making it very hard for me to wait my time after bolusing to eat.

Of course, some situations don’t really allow me to do so. Like when we go to a restaurant and they don’t take as long to fix the food or when we go to my in-law’s for lunch or supper and it’s already done. Do you know how hard it is to sit there and tell them you’re waiting on your insulin to work? When you’re smelling the good food, wanting to eat it, and they’re telling you “Come on, eat!” ? Which I will have to give my mother-in-law a lot of credit. She is beginning to understand why I do what I do and even tells me Sunday Lunch’s menu when we’re at church so I know before we get there. How cool is that?

But it’s still a challenge. Like for breakfast. Calculating a prebolus for food with timing when you add the lovely Dawn Phenomenon in the mix is just brain-wracking, especially for me now. I wake up, I’m starving and my blood sugar is going to the sky without me doing a thing, making me want to eat everything in sight. Sidenote: I hate when I’m high and I want to eat everything! Especially knowing the hunger is not real, but only from being high, and that if my sugar came back down, I wouldn’t be hungry. It is becoming very hard to wait the time, and often I think my wait time has passed when it hasn’t or I wait too long and end up low, stuffing my face, and then skyrocketing anyway.

So, this morning, I did it. I finally set a timer. Figuring in the slight high (who would ever think I would freak at seeing a 130 on my meter! Oh how pregnancy changes EVERYTHING!), dawn phenomenon, and the craving for a Hardees Cinnamon and Raisin biscuit, I prebolused 30 minutes ahead and set my timer….

And waited….

When my time was up, I ate my biscuit (slowly as possible… if you can imagine that for something you can devour in two bites if you wanted…) and prayed for the best. Now the wait to see how this works out.

Speaking of waiting…. I just realized Diabetes is a whole heck of a lot of waiting… but that’s another topic for another day.