Happy Halloween! This is just our second year celebrating Halloween with Diabetes. I have read SO many wonderful posts filled with ideas for successfully managing Halloween and Diabetes. It was great for me to take bits and pieces of each of these posts and develop a plan that I thought would work for us. I loved reading all the different perspectives so much that I have decided to include the links at the bottom of this post.
After reading the insights of many fellow D Mamas... this is how we decided to handle Halloween this year. We let the kids participate in ALL of the Halloween hoopla. School parties, Costume parade, Bobbing for apples, Cupcake decorating, Candy Corn toss and relay, and TRICK or TREAT, of course! I believe that there is a limit on the amount of candy that all of my kids should consume...factoring in Diabetes or not. With that being said, I do let my kids have a day or two of overindulging on candy. Ally is not a very big candy person, really. After the initial excitement wears off, I am willing to bet that her bowl of candy would sit untouched for weeks. (Not the same for Jessi...she'd sneak the candy day and night until every single piece was gone.) So, we planned to let the kids pick out a few pieces of candy each day that they may enjoy....covering the carbs for Ally's with insulin, of course. I think that if I took their candy away right off the bat they would be heartbroken. Plus, it's kind of like when you are on a diet...You tell yourself that you can't have something, then you tend to crave it even more. After a few days, the rest of the candy will just "disappear" and something special will take its place in the candy bowl. (Right now, I'm thinking something simple like new fancy chapstick, fingernail polish, etc.) I liked some of the suggestions that I read to keep the candy that could be stashed away for treating lows...however, as I mentioned before, Ally is not a big candy eater and she would rather eat a glucose tablet than a piece of candy.
I was prepared! I hoped that I would be able to ward off the crazy HIGHS following large amounts of overindulgent candy binging!!
But let's Face the Facts....
Halloween = Candy + Excitement = Sugar High for sure!
BUT the TRICK was on ME! Ally was LOW. Low. low. ALL.NIGHT.LONG! What I had not expected was that Ally's soccer team would end their season in the top of their league. They advanced to a tournament, which was played this Halloween weekend. After playing two soccer games and trick-or-treating fun on Saturday, it didn't matter how much candy Ally consumed. I didn't even bolus for it! Keith and I tag-teamed and checked her every other hour....she was low every single time. Juice after juice (because this is the easiest way for us to treat the nighttime lows - Ally can drink a whole juice box in her sleep without waking up) we kept getting a low reading. Finally we decided to add a pudding to the mix and that seemed to sustain her until morning.
So, with so many ideas and lots of thought, our Halloween with the big D didn't turn out at all as we'd planned. Wonder what we'll try next year!
A Pluthera of Perspectives on Halloween and Diabetes....for future reference: (Let me know if I missed your Halloween post, I'd love to include it!)
Candy Hearts D-Tales The Superhero and The Princess
Our Diabetic Life
I Am Your Pancreas
The We CARA Lot Blog
Houston We Have A Problem
The Princess and The Pump
Welcome To Our Crazy, Happy Life
D-Mom Blog
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