I'm afraid of big numbers.
Like any person who manages or helps to manage diabetes, I'm afraid of big blood sugar numbers and big A1C numbers. Every day is a battle to keep those under an acceptable threshold. Yet those aren't the numbers to which I refer.
What I'm really afraid of are big carbohydrate numbers and big insulin bolus numbers.
My guess is that it all stems from having a child who was diagnosed as a baby. She was 13 months old. We diluted her insulin because we couldn't possibly measure the tiny amounts she needed with an ordinary syringe. Her total daily dose was about 4 units.
She didn't eat much. Breakfast was probably the biggest meal, carb-wise, coming in at a whopping 22 carbs. She'd have a quarter cup of cheerios(8), half a small pear or half a jar of baby food fruit (8) and half a cup of milk (6). Snacks were 8 grams, maybe 4 crackers or 25 goldfish.
To this day it gives me great pause to bolus for more than about 25 carbs.
I vaguely remember mentioning this to a diabetes educator once, who kindly referred to it as a 'healthy fear of insulin.' It's not all bad. I'm not prone to over-bolusing and causing severe lows.
What I am prone to is under-bolusing. The rational part of me weighs/measures/eyeballs the food and thinks '80 carbs.' Then there's a little voice which says, 'but she never eats 80 carbs.' Or 'how could that one dessert be 80 carbs?'
More and more often, I'm able to close my eyes, hold my breath, and deliver whatever crazy amount of insulin is called for. An hour or two later, I'm glad I did. Yet I never do it without trepidation.
I completely get it. Today my husband called to tell me he gave our 3yr old 5 units to cover over 60 carbs for lunch time (at most I give maybe 2 units) . I about had a heart attach but had to keep quite remembering that we do things differently and he always seems to have good #'s.
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