I’m glad to read about your change in perspective regarding the flatline aesthetic. Time in range (TIR), I think, is the best all encompassing diabetes control statistic. Good job on your control efforts!
Congratulations! That looks like a very good flatline to me!
No, I don´t think he thought it would help blood sugar levels, but I did. I had hives on a daily basis for months, that´s why I got the allergy med. I think it could be something more people could try to see if it helps their blood sugar levels as well. Little harm in trying.
I had a doc ones who suggested antibiotics to cope with erratic blood sugars. He meant on a daily basis and he was type 1 himself. I never tried that,- think it was a bit more scary than allergy med.
What medication are you taking? I take an antihistamine on an almost daily basis due to allergies and haven’t found that it helps my blood sugar, although it’s possible that my blood sugar is worse on days I don’t take it. I have wondered whether allergies are maybe, in part, why my blood sugar goes so crazy sometimes.
I´m taking Telfast 180 mg (active substance: fexofenadin, hydroclorid) and Cetrizin Mylan 10 mg (active substance: cetrizin, dihydrochlorid). I was told to take one in the morning and the other before going to bed.
After returning from a nearly three week international travel holiday on Monday, I made a firm commitment to return to my former BG curves. I relaxed my standards while traveling and most of my meal dosing was based on my best guess. I did a lot of corrections and I was not wildly out of control but it was not always pretty. My BG average slipped from about 102 mg/dl (5.7 mmol/L) to 126 mg/dl (7.0 mmol/L). BG variability increased from a standard deviation of about 28 mg/dl (1.6 mmol/L) to 40 mg/dl (2.2 mmol/L).
So, I’m back on my home turf (waters actually!) and more familiar food. I started right back with my consistent walking routine and have logged 3-4 miles the last few days with most walking following meals. Last night I did eat spaghetti and meatballs with a glass of Chianti for my Thanksgiving meal. I added 4 units of Afrezza post-meal corrections at 1 hour and 3 hours. My CGM topped out at 154 mg/dl (8.6 mmol/L).
I went to bed early, slept 10 hours and woke up to this day after Thanksgiving thing of beauty:
Yellow line = 140 mg/dl (7.8 mmol/L), Red line = 65 mg/dl (3.6 mmol/L)
My midnight to 9 a.m. range was 71-106 (3.9-5.9) with an average of 92 (5.1). The standard deviation was a skimpy 10 (0.6).
I do a little happy dance when this happens!
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Congrats @Terry4!
I had a bit of a roller coaster ride yesterday until a bit after 6PM, since then I have been running nicely between 65 - 150, with the highest @ 141.
Very nice Terry. My BG took a bit longer to ‘settle down’ after Thanksgiving - until almost morning (4:30am)!
Since then, been between 60 and 90, though, but I’m afraid it won’t last thru tonight’s dinner… 
I think seeing results that show regained control after a deliberate relaxation is a nice feeling. It reinforces the idea that you’re steering the ship, not the evil-D!
I had a bit of the roller coaster yesterday, too. I even did an 8-unit Afrezza correction yesterday morning in addition to the two post-dinner corrections. Here’s that profile:
@Thas, I’m always amazed at the skinny range you run your BGs. I’ve seen other T2s with similar profiles. It suggests to me that tight control with pumps, CGMs, and carb-limited eating could do a whole lot of good in the T2D population. Congrats on keeping your eyes open and doing what needs to be done!
Here’s my Thanksgiving mess:
@Thas, nice recovery! I think a superior measure of BG control is not preventing every out-of-range BG, but how quickly a person can restore a stable in-range BG. Blood glucose control is the product of both the BG range and the time involved, in other words, the area under the curve. Life happens and sometimes you just want to throw off the limiting discipline and live a little! My past experience is that bringing it in for a soft no-bounce (OK, little bounces allowed!) landing is a practiced skill. You obviously have this down. Good job.
Wow. You all are doing so fantastic compared to me! Congrats. :)
I won’t even show my graphs. I’m having major problems with infusion sets (again) that has me seriously considering adopting something like the untethered regimen…
Is this like MDI? You’ve had problems before with site allergies, maybe separate shots would work out much better for you. I know Bernstein doesn’t like pumps and many people do well following his protocol. Whatever you choose Jen, I wish you success. Please keep us posted.
Wow, perfect night-time bg curve - congrats @Terry4 !
Here’s a link that gives more information about the untethered regimen:
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/clinic/untethered.htm
Basically, you replace part of your basal (say 50-75%) with Lantus, and get the remaining 25-50% from your pump and deliver boluses with your pump. This way, you have most of the flexibility of a pump (variable basal rates, temporary basal rates, convenience of bolusing, extended boluses), but you can disconnect from your pump for extended periods of time without going high.
I don’t need to disconnect from my pump, but I am getting so sick of episodes of unexpected high BG when my infusion sets randomly fail or high BG lasting for hours when the site is just not absorbing insulin because it’s so irritated. I developed allergies to the plastic sets years ago (it’s likely chronicalled on this site!), and when it got to the point that I was having to change sites every day and still having sites become so irritated that they failed, I switched to steel sets. That seemed to work for a few years, but lately I’ve been having problems with them hurting, itching, leaking, bleeding, and more and more they have begun to simply stop working. I’ve been changing them every 24 hours, and sometimes moving them 12 hours or even 6 hours, but it’s seriously burning me out changing sets that often and still having so many of them fail and running high for hours. I tried going back to Insets (plastic sets) for a week hoping that my body had forgotten its allergy, but that was a disaster—in six days I went through four infusion sets, lasting 1, 2.5, 1, and 1.5 days, and every one of them ended up irritated and failing in the end resulting in skyrocketing BG.
I really don’t want to go back to MDI because I do need the variable basal rates and find the other features of the pump very useful. So I’m thinking if I used Lantus I’d only replace 50% of my basal, because I can’t usually go below 50% anyway without ending up high. I’ll talk to my endocrinologist about it and see if he’s ever heard of it, but even if he hasn’t, I may just do it anyway. At least it would save me from hours on end of high blood sugar and constantly wondering if my problem is my site or my body or something else.
My allergies in general have been terrible lately. I’m not sure I’ve ever had to continue taking multiple daily allergy medications this late into the year and still had problems with symptoms. I’m seeing my allergist in February and am going to see if there’s some other type of medication I can take that might help. I’m hoping that maybe this is the reason I’m reacting more to sites these past few months and maybe once my allergies are under better control my sites will calm down again. I can handle the odd irritated or failed site (I am allergic to nickel, which is in stainless steel, and I have eczema so my skin is sensitive to tapes and such), but I can’t deal with it happening with the majority of my infusion sets and ruining any chance I have at tight control.
Returned from a week long ski vacation, the first one I’ve had with CGM. In the past, I had all kinds of troubles when skiing - even just checking can be tricky on the slopes, as the meter refuses to work below some temperature, so it must be kept close to body. Plus, you really need to stab yourself pretty well to squeeze a drop of blood in cold and dry weather. In fear of lows, I would end up running high most of the time. Much better experience this time - kept the receiver in an inner pocket and enjoyed the luxury of just glancing at the bg on a watch. Here is my 7-day Clarity report with some notes for next time - perhaps someone else may find this interesting.
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Very nice summary report, @Dragan1. I think one of the more interesting notes you made was your question about whether you should have extended your temp basal beyond your actual ski-time. I think the chart concludes you should have. Overall, this is excellent control for such a strenuous activity. Well done!
What altitude did you sleep at? I used to do more alpine sports in former times and remember that I had to cut back on my insulin delivery just by subjecting my system to a higher altitude and making it work a little harder all the time. Did you sense that? I know it’s a small factor compared to actually skiing but wonder if you noticed it.
I noticed that you set a lower upper limit for night-time. I set my Dex receiver to 120 all day long and the lower limit to 70. Then for Clarity I set the limits to 65 and 140. Do your Clarity limits agree with your Dex receiver limits? Just curious.
What did you use to make notes on this chart? It’s nice and tidy.
Jen, that seems like a reasonable regimen to try. Your struggle with allergies seems really frustrating to me. I take for granted that I can dependably infuse the insulin I need. It would be nice if you could get some kind of relief from this challenge. Someone mentioned another allergy med in another thread. I don’t remember the name of it. Is it something that might help mitigate your symptoms? Your tenacity and good attitude amazes me.
Been considering setting my upper limit to 120 – right now, the Dex receiver is set to 130, but since the Vibe has the older firmware, it only gives me 20pt increments on the high, so it’s set to 140. Most nights, I’d expect to see no alerts even at the 120 level, but I may see too many during the day; however, if I go to 120 as a high, both devices will be set the same… have to play with it, perhaps.
I was in Vail, CO, so at around 8,000 ft (2,450 m). But, I live in Boulder, CO at around 5,300 ft (1650 m), so this was not such a huge change in altitude or weather conditions. When I travel to sea level, however, I would sometimes notice that I should temporarily (for a day or two) adjust basal rates. But, since trips often involve so much other variability, it’s been difficult to identify patterns.
The limits on the graph reflect what I now use for assessments of my TiR. I’d like to tighten up night-time bg control some more. Your recent example is the type of night-time bg curve I would like to reproduce as often as possible. On the Dex receiver I keep slightly higher lower limits, and the same upper limits, so night-time at 70 and 120, and day-time at 70 and 140, and my overall goals are simply to not activate the alarms. With a day-time upper limit at 120 the alarm would turn on too often for me, which is why I move it to 140.
The chart was done by annotating a screen capture from Dex Clarity in PowerPoint. I am pretty sure this could also be done using any of free photo annotation tools. For example, such simple annotations could be done in Preview on Mac. In general, I’ve been pretty terrible about (not) keeping any logs or records. Trying to improve on that, I’ve been inspired by some of your charts with insightful comments, by other people on TuD who have had success with logs and records, as well as by images in Ponder’s book. I’d further like to make annotated charts that would combine Dex and my Minimed pump data, but I have not been able to find a way to do that yet. Diasend takes all kinds of data, but not data coming from a Minimed pump, unfortunately.