CFRD or CF related diabetes is also common in people with CF.  Due to the pancreas not functioning properly, it throws many things off whack, to include blood sugars.  People with CF take a lot of steroids like prednisone to help with inflammation in the lungs.  Steroids throw blood sugars all out of sorts, usually resulting in really high blood glucose numbers.  With the diet needs in people with CF the amount of monitoring of blood sugars is high.  Our bodies pull so much from us to fight infection and just to breathe that we can bottom out and have really low numbers and also go really high in the matter of hours.

A Blood Glucose Tolerance Test is part of the yearly testing that people with CF have to do to check for CFRD.  We have to keep an eye on it because it can pop up at any time.  During that test, you have to be fasting (no eating before test) and you have to drink a really sugary drink that the lab gives you.  They then test your blood sugar at 3 hour intervals after the test to see how your body processes the sugar.  Some tests can be only an hour or up to 3 hours, it just depends on what your doctor has ordered.  The CFF has standards they go by.

People after transplant often develop CFRD due to the amount of steroids and anti-rejection meds they are on.  CFRD is just another thing that you have to roll into your life with CF.  You take it as it comes.  There is never anything fun about all these added curveballs CF throws at you but you just have to keep fighting.

 (click on photo to enlarge)