It seems like everyone around me is sick lately, friends, family, coworkers... and at work (I am a paramedic) we take in one patient after another with either Norwalk Virus (stomach flu), so Upper Resp Infections like colds, flu, you name it!
Saturday is dessert night for me, I allow myself to eat one dessert of my choice one day a week to prevent myself from eating sweets all the time. I'm type one insulin dependent and a pumper. I am VERY insulin senstivie. Total daily dose at this time is less than 15 u.
When I woke up yesterday my b/g was 201. I corrected with breakfast and figured it was just from dessert the night before and I'd need to bolus more next time I ate that. Trial and Error. But then before lunch it was 289! And That was at 3p! So Of COurse I corrected again and ate very lo carb and watched it come down (via finger sticks) to 172 which is still high for me particularly at this time of day. I ate a low carb dinner and bolused again. Got up at 3a to check my b/g it was 208! I corrected and went back to sleep. STILL 201 this morning. Then I corrected again and it came down to 156 after 1.5 hours. BUT once I got to the 2 hour mark it was 167 so it's on its way back up.
Could it be that I am getting sick? Are my basals changing? I thought my pump set might be bad, but then why would the insulin work for a while and then not again? Your help is greatly appreciated.
It could be. I have always said "I've never had any bad sites" but then I had one yesterday! It didn't get much over 150 but lurked there all day, fending off 200% basals and seemingly impervious to corrections. At first I blamed some of it on working out (pushups, chinups) and figured hormones. I also ate leftover porkrinds early, w/ salsa that got a little bump and then it came down from that and I ate breakfast and it was 120-150 for hours (which is sort of high for me...) despite running a hot basal and some CB while out running errands. By the time I got home from that and taking junior to dancing, it was like 3:00. We got a lot done but it was still up, I noticed the site was pretty bright red and with what looked like pus in the center and thought "ah, that's what they're talking about..." and swapped it out and it seemed to work fine.
Uh oh, it does sound like you might be getting sick. But I've also had wonky up and down and hard to correct blood sugars that in time I did conclude were due to variable absorption, so it certainly couldn't hurt to change your set.
Bottom line, if you continue having those numbers and they go up again despite corrections, or come down a bit then go back up it definitely could be your basals changing and time to start slowly altering them for periods two hours before the problems.
So many variables for every bad event. We like to think that we can identify the cause of all our bad readings but that's probably a beneficial delusion. Your pattern does sound like a bad site to me and I would have either switched out the site or taken a manual bolus for the 289 since you had been high for hours.
On the other hand, while I was fighting off the flu I needed temporary rates in the 160-200% range to maintain marginal blood sugars. And I didn't even feel very sick.
