Basal Tests, My Way

So for the last few months, I've been trying to do basal tests, keeping in line with my New Year's goal to take better care of my diabetes.  I was easily able to do a few tests right when I woke up.  But according to my Diabetes Nurse (DN), they want me to start with the overnight basal.  And then when I most recently tried to do an overnight test, I did a correction with the meal.  I think the correction went wrong, so I wanted to fix that before attempting to do the overnight basal test again.  But my DN said a) I was not supposed to do the correction, and b) they recommend not trying to fix the corrections before making sure the basals are okay.  I understand the logic, but this is ridiculously frustrating, especially since the overnight basal has always been such a big to-do for me to attempt.  I'm supposed to eat a known amount of carbohydrates at dinner (about 40-60 grams), then not eat anything at all until the next morning.  Other people deal with this too, and I'm sure it sucks for them.  But I was thinking about it yesterday - most of those other people are probably on a regular 9-5 schedule, which I am not.  So when they eat dinner and don't eat again until breakfast, in theory they are up for what?  4-7 hours maybe?  Whereas when I do this, I'm up for another 7-10 hours on average.  Also, I'm skipping my third meal, whereas they are not (they would be missing a bedtime snack).  NO WONDER I'M SO RAVENOUS!

I will admit, this whole thought process is not new to me.  Years ago I thought of it too, but never really tried to shift anything.  But if I'm serious about trying to do these basal tests, I need to shift the overnight one a few hours so it's actually my overnight, rather than like half of my day.  So tonight I'm going to attempt an overnight basal test starting at about 10pm instead of 5 or 6pm.

I just spent the last hour working out the logistics of how all these tests should work.  Obviously the overnight one was my priority, so that's the one I dealt with first.  I think it came out really well (and I even learned how to make irregularly-shaped tables for this document!)

I also updated the blurb the original sheets had so they better reflect some stuff I've been told while doing these tests, like you can't drink tea (which is very sad) and they don't actually want you correcting.  I'm not actually going to say anything about this to my DN or dietitian until next week (I have an appointment with them and I'll just bring the sheet in then!)

Wish me luck tonight!  :)