I am in tears as I type this. Only you guys would get it. I am absolutely at a loss and frustrated left with no answers. Wanting to see if anyone else has had any similar experiences. My current crisis was this week. Twice this week...Tuesday and today. I am on a minimed pump with Humalog insulin sure t infusion sets. MY blood sugar this morning was 90 and stable. From 8:30-9:45 my blood sugar according to my CGM and meter rose from 90-250 while fasting!? Both times this happened I was very upset of course as this is scary to me but both instances were "fixed" by changing out my set and was better within a few hours. The pump company cannot give me an explanation and neither time did I ever receive a "no delivery" alarm. HELP!! This has happened a few times in the past (about once every 6 weeks) but twice in one week!? Thoughts!? What if this had happened in my sleep!?
I took insulin the moment I noticed my blood sugar rising and it did nothing.
Does this sound like a site/infusion set issue?
I’m feeling the same way . Meh , it sucks . Sending hugs .
I've been feeling the same way today and yesterday...even posted something about feeling weighed down on FB. I've been going ridiculously high (like, 400-600 ridiculous) and then crashing really low. Just keep checking your blood sugar often. Thats what I'm doing, and even though you might not have all day to keep track of it, do it while you can :) Diabetes sucks, it really does. Some days just feel like "why me" days. But it's going to be okay :) We're all going through the same crap. I hope you feel better!
What kind of sets are they? I didn't find the Quick-Sets as useful as the Silhouettes. Inserting the Sils manually, I can sort of feel through or around scar tissue and avoid getting too mixed up with old sites. Another thing is that you mention "fasting" at that time of day. I've seen several threads where people report spiking at that time of day in conjunction w/ skipping breakfast. Even if you don't want a lot of carbs, having some and taking insulin for it may clear some of that up.
Agree, I was going to say, I can't skip breakfast or I shoot up. Even though if I sleep in my blood sugar is fine (well, except the past two days I woke up at 200+ for some reason). I would try not to stress out. As someone else said, 250 is not an alarming high for a lot of us. Though frustrating, yes. In future maybe try bolusing some insulin as soon as you get up if you plan on not eating. Although, I find even this doesn't really work, or maybe I just haven't bolused enough units.
LiL MaMa,
I know its not that easy, but sometimes a bit humor can help too. A good advice, that your D can not control your life: test, try to find out why high or low, then correct, write everything into your log (if you dont have one, there are some great apps that make it easier to keep up with the bg readings), and then FORGET for a while. if it is time to test again, you can take out your diabetes again. above you could see some great replies, i mostly agree with them concerning your most recent highs.
but sometimes laughter is the best medicine!!
love & hugs, swisschocolate
I think most pumps depend on sensing an increase in pressure when a site becomes blocked. If you are taking small amounts of insulin, the pump may not detect a blockage as fast as it would for someone take 12U of basal a day.
My BG will do this every time I skip breakfast, when I fast, my body will dump sugar and my BG will climb 100 points. Many say you can eat whenever on a pump but I have found that staying on a regular meal schedule especially in the AM, gives me more stable BG. I have been wearing a CGM for over 5 years and have learned that my BG is never stable and never will be. Enjoy your life, keep moving forward, just do the best you can, anytime your BG is out of target range just steer it back in the right direction...just stay on the road that's all that counts...JMHO
Note:
1) My morning corrections are very slow to respond, can take 2 or 3 hours to get a good response.
2) If my first correction does not respond then I will do the next one with a syringe.
3) Remember if you correct when your BG is climbing rapidly, then you are going to come up short on your first correction bolus...it may seem like it did little or nothing.
But if I shoot up that quickly doesn't that mean I wasn't receiving insulin? I always fast in the mornings and usually stay around 80. I don't eat until the afternoon most days. I am on the sure t set acidrock.
That's what I was thinking...I take such small dosages sometimes even just .1 or .2 interesting thought Brian. I did however see air bubbles in my tubing, wonder if the tubing from the previous day this week had them.
Thanks John! Just so strange that the moment I change out my set my blood sugar fixes itself within 20 minutes and begins to go back down.
ITs a horrible disease and I typically try to stay positive about it but my diabetes has become absolutely UNPREDICTABLE to the point of my dr shaking his head and saying "you are just a brittle diabetic". Keep your head up baby girl, we can do this!
I typically get a BG rise in the morning, just after getting up. I don't get up at the same time, so it's clear to me the trigger is when I get up, not related to DP.
Maybe for those that follow a regular sleep schedule, the body's 'internal clock' is anticipating the waking hour, and time of DP / BG rise is constant every day, so an insulin pump can be programmed for that.
For me, when I get up, I take thyroid medicine, and don't eat food for 30-60 minutes. This is regardless of getting up at 7am or 10am. But whenever I get up, I usually need to take .5 - 1.0 units of insulin, without food.
It helps that I have CGMS and clearly see this is how it works for me. Here is an example from this morning, I got up just after 10am. Took 1.0 unit as soon as I saw the CGMS start to rise, and BG check was 96. No food yet. If I hadn't taken insulin, it would have been to 150+ instead of 108. Here's Dexcom for this morning.
It could mean none or just not enough ... Did you check ketones? If it was only from not receiving insulin from the pump, then an injection of insulin should have brought you down, and I think you said it had no effect? So it sounds more like insulin resistance to me, if that's the case.
Did you eat breakfast, or skip eating with the (quite logical) reasoning that you didn't want to exacerbate the problem by dumping even more sugar into your blood?
I've fought this paradox myself for some time, until the collective wisdom of TuD set me straight.
Paradoxically, after Dawn Phenomenon kicks in, your liver will continue to dump sugar into the bloodstream if you don't eat. This is because there are hormones the digestive system releases to signal the body (the liver being a prime target) that there is incoming fuel.
Absent these signals, the liver thinks it needs to supply the fuel needs of the body from it's stores. It will keep doing this until you eat something. As you feel hungrier, the liver is taking note too -- that you're fasting, but need energy now that your up and about -- so it keeps dumping.
Insulin doesn't help. All it does is cause the liver to cycle the blood glucose into glycogen complexes, which just get broken down again and released into the bloodstream.
That is, until the stomach and intestines indicated they are digesting, which will shut off this circular processing of sugar.
I'm 100% convinced of this now, after having seen dramatic effect from simply eating a Yoplait yesterday @6:30a, then this morning having bacon/eggs/toast around 8:00a, ignoring the BG rise to 140 shortly after waking up.
It worked, both days. I was able to get BG under control, back down under 100 within two hours of eating. I bolused correctly for the carbs in the food, as normal.
Now, prior to this, I'd be dumping tons more insulin all morning to correct the high -- usually around 160-170, and stubbornly flat -- to no avail.
If you are eating breakfast, then, well, never mind :-)
No, I don't think that will work. See my direct response later in the discussion to the original post by Lil mama.
From what I've read, and now experimentally verified in my own body, what seems to be going on is just a vicious circle of glucose->glycogen->glucose, consuming the insulin yet making little dent in BG levels. This goes on until you eat, and the digestive system signals via hormones that there is incoming new fuel.
Then the liver shuts down glycogenolysis, but is still responsive to insulin, net net removing glucose from the blood.
The liver is the central player in insulin response. While skeletal muscle and adipose tissue respond as well, the liver's response is the most immediate, and most variable.
A lot of insulin "sensitivity" variation is really just what the liver's doing. High resistance is mostly because the liver isn't removing net glucose. This is why metformin "increases sensitivity" -- it shuts off glycogenolysis, so the process of glycogenesis (assembling of glucose molecules into glycogen clusters), on net, lowers blood glucose.
I'd say it's important to have some moderate amount of carbs to mediate this phenomena. I'm experiementing to learning what the threshold is for me. I know that 13g is enough, tomorrow I'm going to try 6g.
I sometimes have a wide variation from one infusion site to the next, sometimes when I change my BG will drop to the low side and sometimes a new site will be on the high side for a couple of hours or I constantly have to correct until I change to a new infusion site. I would have to say that most are good. When I get a little lazy and relaxed is when some kind of surprise pops up, I guess that's what I hate most about the Bete's...when everything is going good is when it sticks it's tongue out and shows me who the real boss is.