Quick Vocabulary Guide

Hello all,

It occurred to me that I'm throwing a lot of terms around that a new diabetic or someone who is non-diabetic might not know. Here's a list of some of the most common. Please let me know if you'd like me to include others.

Basal insulin: The programed schedule of background insulin you need to function in a day, excluding meals.

Blood sugar or blood glucose: This is how much sugar is in your bloodstream at a particular time. It's the reading that you get from a glucometer. One hundred is roughly considered normal.

Bolus: The amount of insulin you take with a meal to cover the carbohydrate grams you're about to eat.

Carbs: An abbreviation of carbohydrate grams. This refers to how many grams of carbs you're eating at a particular meal. Diabetics use this number divided by their insulin to carb ratio to figure out how much insulin to take with each meal.

Endocrinologist: A diabetes doctor. More specifically, a doctor specializing in hormones and glands, of which insulin and the pancreas are a very important subset.

Glucometer: Also known as a finger pricker, this is the small machine used to determine your blood glucose level using a drop of blood from your finger and a test strip.


Hemoglobin A1c: Also called HbA1c. This test measures how well you've controlled your blood sugars over the last three months by looking at the surface of your red blood cells to see what percentage of them have been chemically changed by high blood sugar. 7.0 (7 percent of those red blood cells) is ideal for a diabetic, but tighter control is always better. A non-diabetic HbA1c is between 4.0 and 6.0.

Insulin to Carb Ratio: This is the number you use to determine how much insulin to take with each meal. For lunch I'm going to have about 60 grams of carbs in leftover Chinese food. I'll take that 60, divide by my insulin to carb ratio of 4, to get a bolus number of 15 units of insulin.

Pump: A beeper-looking device that automatically gives you insulin through a small catheter you insert about every three days. Pumps provide a daily schedule of background insulin, the basal rate, and let you program in the carbs you're taking with a meal to give you boluses for meals. This is an alternative to taking multiple daily injections of insulin.

Sensitivity or correction factor: The amount of insulin you need to take to get high blood sugars back into to normal range. For me that's about 1 unit to 15 blood sugar points above 100.

Weird Tests

Pretty early in your diabetic pregnancy, your doctor will want to check you for the three major groups of complications that can effect pregnancy: your eyes, your kidneys, and your heart.

Diabetic eye disease can sometimes mean you need a c-section because pushing could further damage your retina. A recent diabetic eye exam can rule that out.

For the heart, I had an EKG to make sure I had experienced

no 'hidden heart attacks' which sometimes strike diabetics, and women in particular. This involved 10 minutes of getting sensors placed on my chest, followed by being hooked up to a machine and about 20 seconds of actual testing. Totally non-invasive.

The worst funny test, by leaps and bounds, was a 24-hour urine collection to make sure my kidneys were working well. Kidney disease and pregnancy can interact to increase high blood pressure or preeclampsia for moms.

During the test, you must collect every single drop of urine for a day by peeing into a toilet 'hat' then running through the house with your 'specimen' to a big plastic jug you keep in the... wait for it... refrigerator! Wrap that sucker up in as many plastic bags as you want, it won't help that icky feeling. I think I ate out for a week afterwards, despite disinfecting everything!

Hopefully you'll only have to do this once and can pick a day when 1) you don't have to go anywhere with your toilet hat and pee jug and 2) no one is coming over to your house.

Diabetic air travel: Welcome to the Champagne Room!

The first time a TSA agent escorted me to a 'private screening area' I was terrified. I truly thought someone had planted something in my luggage or my new paint set had some sort of explosive compound. My heart pounded, I became extremely sweaty, I could not control my breathing... I looked guilty!

But no, it was just a misunderstanding about my insulin pump and protocols with the new full body scanners and department policy.

Since then, I've been escorted to the 'champagne room' as I've dubbed the private screening area, on several occasions with escalating hilarity. Kafka couldn't have dreamed this up.

Many people, I'd wager thousands, travel with insulin pumps, continuous glucose monitors and other medical devices every day. Usually, telling your TSA screener that you have one ahead of walking through the scanner is sufficient. You'll just get pulled out of line and have your hands swabbed.

Occasionally, a particular residue in body lotion can alarm the explosive-meter. In this case, you'll likely be asked not to touch anything, identify your belongings and head to a small, private room with multiple agents. They will pat you down THOROUGHLY. I've offered to simply strip for them, but they're not interested.

Although the process is tremendously frustrating, and at times, rather embarrassing, all you can do is roll with it. Try to have a sense of humor. Don't make jokes about anything explosive. And forgo moisturizing until you reach your final destination.