Forgot to Bolus . . .Blaming Technology

I use a Minimed pump and the OneTouch Ultralink meter, which sends my BG reading directly to the pump and which I can then use with the Bolus Wizard to calculate my bolus. Very convenient.

Twice this month I have felt like my BGs were very high after breakfast and, sure enough, they were. I checked the Bolus History to find that I had not taken a bolus for breakfast. Basically I’d forgotten.

What I think happened is that I took the BG, looked at the pump and saw the number there, then went about my bidness assuming that since the number was on the pump I had bolused. Just a theory.

Maybe not, though. Have you had a similar experience. What else would you suggest I do to remind myself to bolus, short of putting a large sign on the refrigerator or front door?

TIA,

Terry

I’ve done this before, too. I have an Accu-check spirit, and a couple of times, I’ve punched in the bolus, but not hit the “okay” button or whatever they call it, so it does not deliver it. I guess I’m still getting used to it.
The sign on the refrigerator doesn’t always work either! I have to take eyedrops every night, and I have a sign on my bathroom mirror - EYEDROPS - I still forget almost once a week!

I used a Minimed pump for years. Then switched to an Animas pump. I always loved using the audio bolus. I found that I thought I had bolused on my new pump but didn’t actually do it correctly so it didn’t happen. I finally just cut myself off from the luxury of the audio bolus. I think it has been long enough now that I may have forgotten the Minimed method. Will upgrade in 2009 though so may not try to learn any new tricks at this time. Too bad your pump doesn’t ask if you want to dose and then beep if you don’t reply. Good luck. Hope you can find a way not to miss your bolus.

I have never forgotten to bolus in 6 years of pumping, not sure why and cannot offer any suggestions. :frowning:

Looking for wood to knock on.

I’ve done this, mainly for two reasons:

  1. As a habit, if I agree with the amount of insulin the pump calculates (on the “Estimate Details” screen), I blindly press ACT three times and I’m done. However, if my last bolus was a square-wave, it defaults again to a square-wave bolus which requires a fourth input (duration of the square wave). Since I don’t enter anything there, it eventually times out and does nothing. You do get three beeps (or three vibrations) when this happens, but its easy to miss. This has happened more times than I can remember.

  2. Sometimes if my sugar is low before a meal, I eat and then plan to bolus afterwards (using the same meter reading as before I ate). But this deviates from my normal routine, so I forget.

And yes, sometimes I’m just absent-minded and forget. It’s pretty rare, but it does happen; and I usually remember mid-meal.

Terry, it’s called the CRAFT disease, “Can’t Remember A Frickin’ Thing”. I have episodes of CRAFT all the time. Welcome to the CRAFT club.

My horrible habit comes when I have a low pre-meal. I will eat with plans to bolus after eating and I seem to forget. Fast forward an hour or so and I am sky-high.
I wish there was a way to set my pump to remind me to bolus in like 15 minutes or whatever. There is an alarm setting on my Minimed, but it’s so much time and trouble to set the alarm to go off.
Sigh.

If I have a low premeal, I still plug in the low number and bolus and eat, I will then have a much better outcome at the two hour mark, as the lower my bgs is going into a meal the better my results. Kind of like bolusing 15 min. prior to a meal. :slight_smile:

Depending on how low I am, I do this. But sometimes I am so low that I am afraid to bolus since my food often doesn’t work as fast as my insulin. Usually I try to not bolus if I am below 65.

I’ve done this though it has gotten less frequent. I have a missed meal bolus alert on my pump to prevent this - if I don’t bolus between such and such times, it lets me know. Usually I forget because I’m in a hurry to get somewhere or to get something done. Sometimes I’ve gotten to the last screen and forgotten to push OK to accept the bolus it suggests and it goes off then too.

I have had similar experiences. Usually when I do a really careful and accurate carb count… I feel proud of myself and start eating. But unfortunately good carb counting is not very helpful without a bolus.

This used to happen to me more often… now I knock on Karen’s wood.

One nice thing about this site is learning that you’re not alone. Unfortunately, I have also acquired a new disease - CRAFT. Thanks a LOT, Maureen.

What would be helpful is if the bump sent an alarm every time the screen changes states. That might remind me that something needs attention.

That is if I hadn’t got into the bad habit of ignoring alarms. . . . sheesh.

I’ll also bolus and eat even when I’m a little low on the same theory - it’s the reverse of bolusing 15-20 mins ahead when I’m normal or high.

All the time, Terry. So often that, to be honest, it was one of the things that made me switch to a pump that DID remind me.

Like Sarah said, Cozmo has a feature called “missed meal bolus” that will let you know if you missed a bolus within a time frame. And if you leave a bolus screen mid-programming, it will beep at you in a little bit to ask if you wanted to complete the task you were doing. Both features have saved me a high blood sugar one time each since I got it in July. Hopefully, the other pump companies will begin adding this feature (or something similar) into new generations of their products.

Barring that, I just made it my husband’s job to ask me if I’d remembered to bolus. Didn’t always work and one hates to recruit more diabetes police, but I needed it.

That’s a cool feature.

I’m going to explore the alarm features of my MiniMed to see if there’s a way to program a reminder. But since it also beeps when the bolus is DONE, I don’t know if I’ll be able to distinguish an “are you finished” beep from a “bolus is done” beep.

In any case, I need to get over the “oh, it’s nothing just ignore it” override I have built in to my brain.

Unfortunately, my insurance company won’t pay for a different brand pump while my current one is under warranty. I just tried to switch to the Animas.

I’m off to find the manual . . .

On my paradigm, I set the 8 alarms to go off every 2 hours from 8am to 10pm. That helped me at least remember to test, but it didn’t do much for my missed boluses.

If you typically eat at home, maybe you should hang a sign on your fridge/pantry that has some very visible reminder. If you eat out, maybe something in your car that says “hey, bolus before you go through this drive-through” or “before you go in this restaurant.”

I found that I was MUCH better about remembering the bolus if I did it early. Because I KNEW that I could not eat without a bolus. The bolus became a little more like setting the table for a meal. I can bolus, then I am allowed to cook. I can bolus, then I can go in the restaurant. When I was bolusing on top of meals, I was too distracted by my hunger (or my excitement that there was !!!food!!! yay FOOD!!!) to remember to do it. grins

What is happening to me lately, when and if I remember to do the early bolus thing, is that I am now going to bolus AGAIN, when I start eating and then I go wait a minute I already bolused. :wink:

I have a problem with bolusing before meals because I have the disease called “my eyes were bigger than my stomach” which means that I think I will eat more than I actually do and therefore if I bolus before meals then I either have to eat more than I want to or I have a low BG and have to eat more later. So I wait until after I eat and then my baby (9 weeks today) is wailing because she is ready to eat and so I forget to bolus. It’s a no win situation. My brain has a one track mind (?). Anyway, you definitely are not alone.

That has almost happened to me too Karen! Be careful!!!

I have kicked myself before for this! I think the better the technology gets, the easier it is for us to forget it. Sort of a mixed blessing:)