honey moon period..months or years?

[LauRa Lu]

How long can the honey moon period last. Has any one experienced it lasting a few years?

My blood sugar levels have just gone totally whacko with no explanation at all. I'm not ill, haven't changed my diet at all...nothing that I can think of. Luckilly going to see the doctor in the next few days anyway. But I'm just SOOooooo.... tired constantly and thirsty, i was 18.8 last night and my meter beeped at me like crazy warning me I was high. I took a shot and this morning I was down a bit but back to 17.5 (mmol/l) in class at 11:30 yawning like some lazy slob.

I havn't had a full diabetes check up at a diabetes centre in ages, had an at the begining of october apointment which I made a WHOLE YEAR ago, and the nurse rang to say my docotr had cancelled it two days before! Can't wait to find out why.

[JediSkipdogg]

Numbers do change over time and you may be starting to get a cold. Remember, the average cold has already peaked before you even sense symptons. So that could be one issue that is going on.

The other could jsut be plain bad math. I've had those before.

Or lastly that I can think of is your insulin may have gone bad. Very very rare, but can happen, especially with Lantus.

[2high]

I dunno LauRa... I havent (personally) heard of a honeymoon lasting that long, but I guess its possible...

Is it possible you could have some sort of underlying infection at all, or have you changed your regime at all? Is your insulin in date? Have you changed your long-acting cartridge lately??

Just trying to think of other causes for ur bg going ballistic...

Good luck at the drs! Hope they fix ya!

Kit

[LauRa Lu]

I do have a tickly throaty cough.. usually the sign of a cold coming I guess. But my numbers seem a bit 'too' high for it to be that.

I think my levemir is fine... but saying that I do recall a few people generally experiencing this with levemir... I've been on it about 3 years though!

[2high]

oops! I wasnt copying u Jedi, I just took a loooong time to type that message... I'm easily distracted... Biggest Loser is on :D

[Cyborg]

My honeymoon period lasted about 4 years...

[Shocked]

Years, me yes. I was first diagnosed as Type 1 and was on insulin for 10 days and had all kinds of problems with lows. Kept having to reduce and reduce the amounts and by day 10 they took me off of it. Said I was likely in a honeymoon period. THe diabetic educator would not tell me how long this would last. after 3 weeks, she said she had never seen one go that long before. it lasted 7 years with diet, supplements and moderate exersize.

Years are possible, although rare likely. My needs seem to change with the seasons. I just had a wild week myself. I've only been on Lantus/humalog for a little over a year, though.

[spike]

Mine lasted just about 2 months, at age 31, after a delayed DX that put me on insulin for a few months, then off for 2, and now on for the last 28 years and counting.

[grace girl]

I don't know exactly, but my honeymoon lasted between 11/2 to 2 years. I was on oral meds for the first 8 months, then I went off of the deep end and quit taking them for about another 8 months, and by the time I went back to the doc my pancreas had kicked the bucket completely.

[Miss Jade]

My honeymoon lasted 3 years. Everytime I saw my endo she would warn me that it would end soon, but it just kept going and going like the energizer bunny. I did still need insulin during that time though - just smaller doses.

It all came to an abrupt end this year though and my insulin needs have increased (tripled), although they are still quite small compared to the average (have been told that I may be insulin sensitive - whatever that means).

[sbuff28@charter]

Like everyone else, heres my timeline. It may help you out.


12/5/06 diagnosed
12/14/06 bs in control. insulin needs drop from 40 to 20 units TDD
12/27/06 drops from 20 units to 10 units TDD

8 months goes by...

8/21/06 insulin needs increase from 10 to 15 units TDD
10/23/06 insulin needs increase from 15 to 20 units TDD.

My calculated TDD should be around 54 units with honeymoon neglected.


I believe if honeymooning was graphed as a function of time it would be bell shaped, skewed to the left. So inherently there will be a good amount of time variation between the actual ending period of the honeymoon. ( basicly is hard to place it at a point) But knowing its a bell shaped curve you could actually graph it and come up with a relativly accuate timeframe.

[Funnygrl]

I've heard it can lasts months, or years depending on how soon the diabetes was caught and how good control was throughout.

[Amanda_Jo22]

My honeymoon lasted 3 years. I was dx'd T1 at age 16. Was controlled by diet and small amounts of insulin until I was 19. I had rebelled and had stopped taking my insulin or checking my bg... ended up in DKA, what a lovely thing...

[scara]

I'm almost at a year now, it was caught fairly early on (only lost 10 pounds before I got checked out) and I pushed the docs to get on insulin early to hopefully prolong the honeymoon since insulin was inevitable.
TDD is still about 15 units (same as when I started), control remains tight with A1C's at 5 to 6. A week without some decent cardio or letting the Levemir get too hot while camping whatever and the numbers crawl up in the double digits pretty quickly....

[Funnygrl]

I started insulin pretty early...even before my bs was consistantly high without it. I also was diagnosed early...my bs was only 175 when it was caught. I used small amounts of insulin on mdi at first, then moved quickly to pumping and use more regular amounts. I am still in a honeymooning type phase, but seem to be very much so insulin dependent now. I feel my year of excellent control is due to early detection and early tight control.

[nab486]

I think I may be in the boat with you LauRa Lu.... I've been wondering if my honeymoon is ending... my numbers aren't nearly as predictable as they were for a while. I've been reading everything I can get my hands on and I am still not getting the control I had for a while. I was dxd almost 4 years ago, the first year was definitely a honeymoon because they told me I was type 2, so I ate almost no carbs, lots of cardo and kept my numbers pretty good. After a year of that they said type 1.5, I got on insulin and now my needs seem to be creeping up. I think I am going to ask for a C-peptide test to see just how much function I still have.... it is quiet an annoying little beastie we have to deal with ...:hmmmm:

Jamie

[sedita]

They caught mine pretty early on. My BS was a little over 220 fasting in the morning when dx'd.

My honeymoon lasted about 4 yrs. The endo I was seeing at the time was running a study to see if aggressive therapy could prolong the honeymoon. Unfortunately this resulted in lots of lows, feeding the insulin, and the resulting weight gain.

Probably the most interesting part of this involed going on a machine called a biostater for one week of the year. This involved two IV's. one that measured the BS every 5 mins, and another that gave either saline, dextrose, or insulin based on need. It was a true closed loop system. Exactly what everyone of us would love our pumps to do now. Except for the fact that it was the size of a house, and had to be plugged in, which meant you were confined to about a4 or 5 ft radius of it for the full week.

They performed glucose tolerance test and measured c-peptide, and I still had some level of production for over 4 yrs.

[Funnygrl]

I saw the biostater online somewhere...it looked cool.

[sedita]

It wasn't too much fun. The thing was huge, and basically you were confined to bed, or sitting/standing next to it.

But definately cool in terms of what it could do. For a week straight they could dial me in to BSs around 100 or so with minimal variation.

[Funnygrl]

What amazes me most is not only what it could do, but when it could do it- it was around since like 80s, right?

[sedita]

I was on it during the mid to late 90's, but the machine was much older than that, although I'm not sure when it was made.

There aren't too many of them around anymore. I believe my Dr told me there were only 5-6 left in the country, so when it would go down finding parts became difficult. Because of this, it was his little baby and none of the nurse were allowed to touch it. He was at the hospital several times a day checking in on me and the machine.

[nab486]

I read about one of these somewhere.... it seems like they said that if you are "stabalized" with normal sugars for a week or so your body actually stays in much better control for a long time afterwards....almost a year I think.. I need to look that up again.

Did you feel that your control was better even after going off of this thing?

It seems like they would make more of them just for helping people who are hospitalized for complication and stuff.... I mean keeping blood sugar completely normal during surgery or recovery seems like it would be very helpful.

[It Ain't Over]

I read about one of these somewhere.... it seems like they said that if you are "stabalized" with normal sugars for a week or so your body actually stays in much better control for a long time afterwards....almost a year I think.. I need to look that up again.

Did you feel that your control was better even after going off of this thing?

It seems like they would make more of them just for helping people who are hospitalized for complication and stuff.... I mean keeping blood sugar completely normal during surgery or recovery seems like it would be very helpful.

After the DCCI (?) studies they did find that a lot of new type 1 patients would revert to the diabetic honeymoon for a short time after undergoing intensive insulin therapy. Don't hear much about that now, but with the current regiment now I guess the only honeymoon is immediately after diagnosis. Remember the treatment course then was 'take a shot of NPH in the morning'.
I can verify the problems with unstable control and going in for a major surgury. That happended to me in the 80's with the old Lente tx. Had a carotid artery tumor removed and it nearly killed me. Said bg dropped to 15 lab measured, and started to show major distress. I guess that is what a lack of undertanding by your doctors of type 1, and then losing a lot of blood can do. Now have a pump and would assign someone there to check the bg's every hour. I was in surgury for 10 1/2 hrs. Long to go with no checks and to be under.

[sedita]

I was on NPH at the time, and basically was just battling lows. Plus shortly after my first time on the machine, I left for college and didn't manage my diabetes that well.

Honestly I can't remember how much more stable I was, it has probably been 8 years or so since I underwent the treatment. But I definately think that their approach helped prolong my honeymoon, which gave some coverage if I went high.

I could definately see this being useful for someone that was going to be in the hospital for awhile. But my guess is that it isnt very practical for the most part. You limited to the bed or bedside when hooked up. And it wasn't a real quick process to get up and running. It was very big, so not something that you could just move at leisure if a patient needed to be moved.

I'm sure they could improve on it with todays technology, but my guess is that it would come down to cost. Why build an expensive machine when they can manage most people with injections, which are relatively cheap.