I’ve never done this before. Diagnosed type 1 in February and never broke a step of my routine. I went to bed yesterday without taking my basal insulin. I tested and somehow completely forgot. I realized it sometime this morning earlier and panicked and took half my units. I guess there’s a first time for everything but I am a little upset at myself. Anyone else ever do this?
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Yep. Even went to bed once forgetting to connect my pump…
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Oh yeah. Ever miss oncoming traffic or a stop sign because you were looking in the wrong direction, or just thinking about something else entirely? Things get overlooked sometimes; it’s part of being human. And specifically about basal insulin, yeah, I’ve done that. More than once.
When something like that happens, the only thing there is to do is move on. “You can’t fix yesterday.”
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Yep! Handled it the same way. It won’t be the last time you do it in your life, so don’t be too hard on yourself. Just fix the situation as best you can and carry on. Diabetes is a LOT to keep up with!
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I’ve never forgotten anything. My memory is the best memory ever. Now, what were we talking about?
EVERYONE has forgotten something. When I first got my 530g pump, I would get right up to pushing the bolus button after testing and something would distract me. And, you guessed it, I would forget to take my bolus for my meal.
The one nice thing about this situation is that the pump can tell me when I have taken a bolus. If I ate dinner at 7 and wonder at 8 why my BG is soaring, I can look at my bolus history and see that my last bolus was at 1:15pm.
That’s the tricky question. How much of what my original bolus was supposed to be should I take? What’s my correction factor for forgetting. Why do…squirrel!!
I apologize for reminding ANYONE of the Grumpy Orange Person.
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I don’t have a pump, but I did have a similar problem using pens. I’d calculate how much I needed and the whole bit, pull out my pen and get ready to dial it up - and get distracted and set it down. Then I couldn’t remember if I took it or not! I finally resorted to buying a Novopen Echo and the slight extra trouble (my pharmacy has to special order, every time) the 3mL refill cartridges of Novolog instead of the Novolog Flexpen. The pen tells me approximately when I took my last dose and what the dose was.
LOL. I do it the really old-fashioned way: with a written log. If I’m away from home, I make a note in the phone and transfer it when I get home.
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Wow. I didn’t think about it that way. Thank you, Feeling better. I think part of me was scared that if I messed something up, no matter how tiny, even once it would be like opening a doorway to complete derailment. That’s the way I felt this morning.
Please, please, please don’t let yourself get into this way of thinking. Diabetes is a hard enough condition to deal with without feeling that you need to be perfect. You can do things the same way from one day to the next, and not get the same results. I’ve had days, even as a T2, where I’ll eat a meal and dose for it and I’ll do just fine. Eat the leftovers the next day and dose for it, and I go low or high. T1 is even more volatile, and we’re all human, with human fallibility. The trick to avoiding “complete derailment” is to simply do the best you can, and accept that there’s going to be some missteps and detours along the way, and to manage them as best you can as much of the time as you can.
I was reading this article in Huffington Post this morning. There’s a lot of anxiety that comes along with dealing with diabetes, a lot of judgement about us being “in control” of it that really shouldn’t be there. Really, we’re just doing the best we can, juggling flaming chainsaws whilst jumping on a trampoline some days and still trying to keep up with the rest of life as well. We’re only human. Some days we forget our keys and have to go back just like everyone else, and some days we forget our medications, just like everyone else out there who takes a prescription.
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Stone tablets or clay tablets with cuneiform?
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Palimpsests, to save $.
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Let’s see. If you take one basal injection each day and also one shot for each meal and an average of one correction per day, that makes about five injections per day to remember. For the year that means 1825 separate events, 1830 in this leap year. If you only forget one percent of the time, only one time in 100, then that means this can happen over 18 times each year! If you adopt some memory aids, perhaps you can cut it down to one tenth of 1% which equates to almost two times per year.
What I’m trying to say is that you will make cognitive errors doing something as frequently as five times per day. The important thing is that you learn how to adjust and also keep yourself safe. It appears you made a reasonable adjustment. Don’t beat yourself up. As others have said, we’ve all done this. A much more serious error is injecting fast acting insulin when you intend to inject your basal dose. That mistake can lead to a 911 call! Building in a system to prevent this is smart to do.
Treating diabetes with insulin is one long series of fixing previous errors and miscalculations. Our tools are imprecise and somewhat inaccurate. Some people call this surfing! Good luck, relax, you’ll do well!
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As you’ve seen, we all have. You know the other one lots of us have done? Anyone who, when on MDI, accidentally crossed your doses up and gave yourself the “basal” amount of Novolog/Humalog, please raise your hand. Oh yes, I count quite a few out there. You want to be scared about something, now that’s a scary one. Or you can look at the bright side and say, “Hey, time to grab a spoon and pull that carton of Edy’s Fudge Chocolate Brownie out of the icebox!”
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Eating ice cream from the container? Who has ever done that??! 
Edit: Maybe my intended tongue in cheek comment missed the mark. Eating ice cream straight from the box is a guilty pleasure of mine. 
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I did it once. I admit it. I’m willing to confess my aberrant behavior. We’re all friends here.
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Just spent 40 minutes disconnected from mine after forgetting to reconnect it after a shower.
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I’ve been on insulin for over three years now and not once have I forgotten to take my basal. But that’s largely because my domestic partner usually gives me my basal, so it would take both of us forgetting to miss it.
Unfortunately even with both of us doing it, several times we’ve both goofed in a different way. I’ve handed him my bolus pen instead of my basal and he’s given it to me before we realized the mistake. Oops! The last time it happened was only a couple of nights ago. Then I have to eat another meal’s worth of food, but I also give myself my normal basal, as well, so I don’t get off the schedule.
Carol
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::sigh::
Yup…only I took my bolus in the morning, was on my way to work and thought I had forgotten to take it so I took it again. Bet ya can’t guess what happened when I got to work. ::sigh::
My guess: You ate a crap-ton of food (you would normally only lust after) in order to stay alive.
Well, am I right or what? 
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…lol if only I was that smart. Nope, by the time I realized something was seriously wrong it was too late. Needless to say, I got to make friends with paramedics and my work health services department. ::sigh::