If I took a correction at 3pm and would like to eat dinner with my family would that be safe to take more and eat or will that be called stacking and cause a low? It's been 2 and half hours. Blood sugar is 88 now and would like to eat but don't know if it's to soon since I took the correction.
That would be stacking however if your dose was calclated very precisely, you should be where you'd want to be. If I'm heading down steeply, I might bolus for the dinner food and have a glass of something with a few extra carbs, beer, milk, whatever, maybe 7-10 g of carbs to cover the "leftover" insulin from the correction. 88 after two hours, depending on how high you were, seems pretty good to me but you may have some insulin on board floating around to clean up with some food. I don't mind that too much as I like food!
This graph shows the insulin durations of different insulins and seems to represent them fairly well:
You just need to take into account the Insulin on Board. It depends on your Duration of Action; we all figure that a bit differently. I'm on Apidra and use 3 hours. So if, let's say I took a 3 unit correction. If it's been 2.5 hours I will have .5 units left. So I can take that into account when I bolus for a meal. It's not a matter of "too soon" but of being aware of the Insulin on Board. Just to complicate the matter, for me, I often bolus for the full carb amount, regardless of some IOB for a correction. So in the case you described I would just go ahead and bolus for the carbs I was going to eat. But if you want to be cautious and are not that aware of your responses yet, I would consider that you still have x amount of insulin still on board, and subtract that from your bolus.
I can tell you what I do and what my endo said to do, unless you are correcting a high, try not to take another dose until 3 hours after the last one. It also depends on how high you were and how much you took to correct that and where you're at currently.. or where you were at earlier.
I have learned I can take it sooner depending on what I'm eating. I can also take a one unit correction when I'm at 110's heading up, usually in the afternoon, and end
up at a perfect 84 or so even while I'm walking around shopping or doing activities.
I bolus for everything except when I'm low 60's and I want to bring myself up, then I can sometimes eat a meal without bolus. If I am in the 60's and I want to bolus I eat some olives or cheese which bring me up and then I bolus for the meal soon after and I don't wait to eat longer than preparation of the meal.
Good luck!