Hopefully people aren’t minding that I’m posting pretty much daily on here! I had another fantastic day today! I put my basal rates and other pump settings down slightly since I’ve been having lows, and they seemed to work perfectly! I ate well over 200g of carbs today so I thought I would be running high, but wasn’t. I almost wish I had because I have sort of fallen off the low carb thing the past two days, time to get back to it …
Also, I changed my site yesterday and after just over two days there was NO irritation at all. There wasn’t even a bump where the needle had been! I don’t know whether it’s the new type of infusion sets that are causing such good control or the new insulin, since I changed them both at the same time, but whatever it is I hope it sticks around for a LONG time!
6:06 AM - 2.8 (50) - Skittles (15g)
9:53 AM - 5.0 (90) - Breakfast (25g)
11:51 AM - 7.8 (140)
2:03 PM - 4.6 (83) - Lunch (40g)
4:19 PM - 7.9 (142) - “Snack” (80g)
6:12 PM - 7.7 (139) - Dinner (75g)
8:21 PM - 6.4 (115)
9:59 PM - 6.3 (113)
10:58 PM - 4.5 (81) - Snack (15g), no bolus
11:31 PM - 3.8 (68) - Skittles (15g)
12:01 PM - 6.7 (121)
Wow! Nice result again! If you are dropping from 121 @ midnight to 50 when you wake up, it may be that some of the insulin there needs to be turned down? Maybe try turning it down more from like midnight to 3:00 am, and leaving a bump for DP or something like that? If you had a CGM, it would be interesting to see where exactly it’s plummetting. I have always had some sort of basal bump, sometimes a couple of different ones, since I’d gotten the pump.
A couple of other things I see are wondering if you were able to prebolus for the 80G “snack” (I have a lot of those “snacks” too…I was talking to my P90X buddy and he explained that the schtick on the diet for that is to not have any carbs after 5:00PM, which is when I probably eat 75% of my carbs…) and the dinner? I rarely eat anything and probably not that much when my BG runs up.
It looks like you did a great job getting out of it smoothly but then some “turbulence” towards bedtime? There still seems to be sort of a “tail” on the rest of the evening with the no bolus snack? If you were at 81, a 30 point drop in an hour, you could perhaps conclude that there was still some insulin “on board”? I will ping my pump, inputting a fake bolus to see what it says for “active insulin” and kind of eat accordingly. If I perceive a decline like the one in your log, I would probably have something that works faster than a “snack” to anticipate the low. On Friday night, I would very likely dip into my stash of “thicker”, carby beers, something like a Guinness or one of the more micro-brewy treats (Two Brothers’ Atom Smasher Octoberfest, Full Circle, etc…) that will give me a quicker boost? Or milk or V8 (Bloody Mary perhaps, to impair the DP a bit? heh heh heh…), 10-15G of carbs still aiming for a quicker carb fix as, if there were still a 2-3 “active” units leftover from dinner, reaching for a quick carb “gun” first might have fought off that lower thing that was going on, and then maye avoided the 121. Of course, then you might have gone really low after the 70 point PM drop but well, it’s a great result. I’m just tossing out some ideas for things to try to look for as you continue your experiments and work to get numbers that aren’t just “good” but “smoooth”? Even when my numbers are good, I still look at the outliers as things to work on?
Jen, definitely not minding your posts, it’s a learning experience to follow your ‘advetures’. Well done! Looks as if you’ve gotten a good start on smoothing things out. I might not make any basal changes for a few days just to see how it pans out, but totally agree with ar’s suggestions around food. Kudos!
Good numbers.
I was curious what is the new insulin and infusion set you changed to.
Lori
Hi Lori, the new insulin was just a new package of Apidra which I've been using for the past six months or so. The new infusion sets are ones that use a metal needle instead of a plastic cannula, because I seem to have developed an allergy to the plastic cannula and was getting hives/itchiness/inflammation at my site after just one day, and think it was interfering with the absorption of insulin.
I am not very familiar with Apidra how does it differ from Humalog.
Thanks Lori
PS I am glad you were able to get your numbers where u want them. It seems strange but when my numbers are where I want them it makes me feel better about myself.