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Also called “The Big Kahuna”
or
“The Sideways Susan”
OK, I made those up.
Bolus insulin is fast-acting (lasting 3-5 hours ), as opposed to most basal insulins, which last 12-24 hours (more for some of the newer ones) in your body.
EXCEPT for those using an insulin pump. Insulin pumps use fast-acting insulin for bolus insulin AND basal insulin. The insulin pump dispenses little tiny doses of fast-acting insulin to mimic how a pancreas works.
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My favorite, learned right here on TUD: “Rage bolus.” What you do when the BG is stuck up there and you hit it with what seems like a reasonable correction, then another, then another, and it just sits up there laughing at you, so you crank your pump or your pen up to eleven and go Spinal Tap on it. To your regret, usually, when it goes plunging down into the danger zone half an hour later.
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But other times, some good old rage bolusing is the only thing that works and you don’t end up going low.
Working on it. Just gotta get the flames right.
I’d like to add a definition:
SKITTLES
Small elliptical spheres of rainbow-flavored deliciousness called “candy” by normals which are, in reality, medicine used to treat low blood sugars that PWD occasionally experience. They come conveniently packaged for accurate dosing: one Skittle contains one gram of carbohydrate.
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Candy for BG boosting is too slow for me. In fact, candy for low BG SUCKS.
Though someone else coined this term, I use it all the time:
Diacrap
The diabetes supplies that slowly creep into every corner of your life. Includes the 20+lbs of stuff you need to carry for “a quick errand” (one can never carry too many juice boxes or infusion sets), the insulin that you keep in the butter compartment of the fridge, and the lifetime supply of lancets that are hiding in the back of your closet
Which got me thinking of another term:
Daylight Savings
That day where you either have to push the clocks forward or backward, change the smoke alarm batteries, update your BG meter and insulin pump’s time, and change your lancet (or maybe that can be held off for the next Daylight Savings 
).
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I remember Gary Scheiner specifically recommending to us certain candies as being superior for dealing w lows, Airheads, Sweetarts & some others that are dextrose-based. I know a lot of folks like @acidrock23 make up baggies of 15 jellybeans to use for 15 gram low treatments. They didn’t have glucose tabs when I was dx, I also took the little bags of sugar whenever I ate out or got coffee.
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It’s the speed of being able to access the sugar. I’m 6’3" and 170 pounds. I don’t have time to chew, swallow and wait to digest. It may work for others, but it’s just too slow for me. I apologize for the horrible pun–a little bit.
I remember back in the day, my Mom carried sugar cubes wrapped in foil. I can’t remember the last time I saw sugar cubes.
I want a T-shirt with the Rage Bolus banner on it!!!
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Skittles actually contain fat. If you look at the ingredients, the first ingredient is “corn syrup” and the second ingredient is “Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil.” Traditionally corn sugar was essentially dextrose, but “corn syrup” is generally code for a syrup that is “not” HFCS (perhaps % fructose less than 42%). Personally, I don’t think skittles are the best. They aren’t pure dextrose (glucose) which is recommended and worse they contain what are essentially transfats.
My weapon of choice is smarties and sweet tarts which are 100% dextrose.
Skittles work as quickly as pure dextrose for my daughter. And I’m not going to lose sleep over that amount of transfats, as she doesn’t go low that often. Plus she doesn’t like the taste of Smarties or Sweet Tarts. YDMV.