In October 2019, I was simultaneously trying to reduce insulin and wean off prednisone.
I had noticed that I had to take insulin to “cover” my morning prednisone dose, which actually was causing a larger bG rise than my evening meal.
Partway through the month, I got a Libre CGMS, so I had daily graphs on the Libre reader rather than discrete bG readings to record in my printable monthly blood sugar log; thus my my diabetes record book began recording my verbal descriptions of what was occuring.
I began metformin, in hopes that it would assist me in getting off insulin.
The Libre allowed me to see how often my bG dropped below 70 mg/dL overnight, sometimes for hours. I had begun to realize this was rather normal for me.
On October 16, having reduce prednisone from 7 mg/day to 4 mg/day, I saw *two* Dawn phenomenon bG rises, one beginning before I woke and took my dose which caused the second rise. This excited me tremendously; it meant years of HPA suppression had not put my adrenals permanently to sleep; they were alive! This whole weaning thing might actually work.
October 19 was the day I realized, my bG meter won’t let me eat low-carb tortillas; my bG rose above 140 and stayed that high all night!
As I continued weaning prednisone, my Dawn Phenomenon kept causing daily excurisons over 140 in the mornings.
On October 26, I noted that my 7-day average bG was 137, but I’d been above 140 44% of the time due to the prednisone peaks. By the end of the month, I’d reduced that to 36%, still not awesome.
Still, I was mostly managing my diabetes without insulin. Given I’d begun on 100 u TDD insulin with bG usually over 200 and spikes over 300, this was pretty darned good.
But I screwed up my bG pretty badly with some chocolate over the holidays.
