God love 'ya
LOL. :)
I don't get very nervous at 150, for the simple reason that I rarely allow it to happen. I have my ISF and I:C ratios dialed in well enough that it doesn't happen very often, and when it does head thataway, I correct it before it gets out of hand.
Now, is that a lot of work? Yeah, it is. Is it a burden sometimes? Most definitely. We all make personal choices and tradeoffs consistent with our own goals, objectives, temperaments and values. That's one I'm personally willing to do. As a dear friend once said to me, a touch of OCD can come in downright handy if you have diabetes.
;-)
I am curious about you. How many times do you correct daily to achieve that?
I'm much like David -- I keep it pretty tight.
How many time will I correct? As many as needed to keep tight control. I've done more corrections in 2-3 hours than I could keep track of when sick and insulin metabolism is just all out of whack.
Of course, this is with an Omnipod. The controller (PDM) keeps track of IOB, I'm quite confident in the accuracy of my Dexcom that I use it all the time to calculate corrections, and the PDM is wireless.
So, I correct in the middle of a meeting at work. All the time. No one knows. Quick look at the CGM, push a few buttons on the PDM, done. Anyone who doesn't know any better thinks I was checking something on a cell phone.
I could never do this, peroid, without a pump and a cgm. My control would be far worse.
I'm thirsty for the day the CGM is integrated with the pump AND has a feature to simple auto-correct on it's own. Not quite an artificial pancreas (the user would still have to handle food manually), but a damn good way down the road to one.
Frustrating thing is, for some of us (I'm an example) the technology is there NOW to do this. For me (not everyone) the G4 is reliably accurate and consistent enough to facilitate this. All that's missing is integration with the Omnipod controller and some software.
I really, really, REALLY am sick and tired of the overweening paternalistic society that stands in the way of me deciding for myself what risks I want to take, FOR MYSELF!
You can never stop advocating for your own patient rights.
You guys are like strange, mythical animals that I do not understand, and barley even believe exist. Am I right in visualizing that you alternate within a range of 80 - 120 all day? Is that even possible for type 1?
As with every other question related to diabetes, the answer is, "it depends." ;-)
If I am not (a) cheating, (b) taking a mini diabetes vacation, (c) dining out, or (d) ill -- in other words, on normal uneventful days -- rather seldom. Certainly less than once a day. My goal is not to let it get to the point where I need to do that. Do I always succeed? Of course not. Do I usually succeed? Yes.
Well, yes, I pretty much stay between 70 and 120 or so provided nothing untoward is going on.
However, full disclosure: I am T2 with five or six beta cells that still work (c-pep of 0.3), so I would never presume to prescribe what anyone else should do -- just reporting what succeeds for me. T1's certainly face a different playing field with different pressures and limits. (Though, as time goes by and I keep getting older, I become more and more like a T1 and less and less like a "traditional" T2.)
Just as a footnote, I wish I had gone in and demanded insulin a decade or so earlier than I did. I'd probably have a lot more pancreatic function left, as opposed to the trace remnant I do have.
Agreed. I sometimes tell people that if someone's going to have diabetes, it might as well be me, because I have the personality for it. I'm super analytical, a bit OCD, part of me gets off on the challenge of mastering this condition, at least to the best of my abilities. But there are certainly days when I'd take a break from it in a second. And initially it was a huge adjustment, because I was the healthy kid, I almost never missed a day of school because of any kind of illness, so the notion of having a chronic condition like this messed with my mind.
Me too, like David said - I pretty much stay between 70 and 120 or so provided nothing untoward is going on. I am a T1 and I suppose I am strange but not because of my bg numbers. 120 is my limit and I sure as hell get nervous at 150 and will correct that number and keep an eye, same for lower than 70. I like living in the flat line and would join that club but I don't have the CGM to show the members. I flat line and have done it for a couple of decades since I got a pump. Testing is key to keeping bg in range. Testing includes checking the bg as well as identifying patterns as they sometimes occur and then testing basal/ratios/blah blah blah.
I don't do daily corrections and wonder why that assumption is always made when someone manages in normal range. It us entirely possible to do without correcting highs or lows on a daily basis.
ROFLMAO. It messes with everybody's mind. ;-)
Correcting last sentence in earlier reply to -
It IS entirely possible to do without correcting highs or lows on a daily basis.
Agreed--if I have to correct, I'm already behind the curve.
I've been playing with increasing the interval between bolus injection and eating, plus super bolusing also, in order to tamp the initial post-prandial spike. But it is playing with fire, easy to unintentionally go low.
+1 karen
It's pretty typical for me to wake up in the morning at look at my CGM screen and see a virtually flat line for 6+ hours. And I'm pretty darn flat the rest of the day too.
Until I'm not!
I had surgery last Monday, so today is post-op day 9. The first couple days I was high as is to be expected. Then things leveled out to my 'normal'. However the past three days, my pumps has jumped into Threshold Suspend a total of 8 times! I got very little warning on these... I'd get a Predicted Low, followed by a Fall Rate alarm and within 5 minutes drop into the 50's. Been setting some temp basals to cover.
Just now had another one - 49!
OMG! I'm sorry to put this here but it's like a light bulb just went on!
I know why, and have experienced this in the past, but it did not dawn on my until just this minute while typing this reply (I think I can blame the Oxy & Vicodin for the cognitive impairment) what the cause is: Sulfamethoxazole/Trimethoprim a.k.a. Bactrim DS
Yes it's a rare side effect and in my case it's even more rare because in addition to the significant lows, I also suffer some very out of character, completely unexpected highs! Last night for example, I corrected a 52 (like normal) only to have it jump to 177 fifteen minutes later! (All my doctors call me weird!)
OK, so I'm not loosing my mind.
Been here done this...time to go back and look at my notes.
Thanks to all that contributed to this discussion. It drew my attention, which forced my brain into another operating mode and allowed the the analytical part to subconsciously work on the problem!
I also get nervous at 150. I try to keep my levels between 70-120, will let my meal "spikes" go up to 145, but otherwise I try to keep it right around 90-100. All was going pretty well with my control until I had a 230/260 high (tested twice to confirm -I also was loudly cursing during the process) after my bedtime snack last night, corrected a ton, realized that I would head into the 30's if I did not have any tablets based off a test 1.5 hours later, took two tablets, went to bed, and still woke up at 130 *ugh*. It then became a million times worse when the process was repeated all over again after doing my site change and spiking to 180 (yay, over correcting to make sure that you are receiving insulin).
As what my lazy T2 father tells me, I have OCD: obsessive-compulsive-diabetes. I'm going to get my revenge when he has a higher A1C than me (though I am disappointed that my bloodwork yesterday came back at 5.8, but that is a different story).
Well I don't like 150 either but I see that number with more regularity than I'd like. And I can't imagine a day without a correction either with or between meals.
I put a great deal of effort into maintaining good control but stuff happens. Flat lining isn't the only road to "salvation". I doubt if a single Joslin Gold Medalist escaped having years of highly variable blood sugars. The tools weren't good enough to maintain even near-normal blood sugars until recently.
Maurie
I am afraid that I also would have to rise from the ashes to see results like that but it is good to see that people can achieve such results. I am much like you, mohe0001 and have to juggle with 4 to 5 balls in the air to achieve reasonable BGL. My motivation is that my feet become very sore if I do not keep levels controlled in the normal BGL range.
LOL. OCDiabetes. Hilarious. I'm gonna use that.