No different from a regular bolus. It is just a short-cut button into the Bolus menu. If I am eating out and don’t know the carb count in advance, I just use it to input the estimated carb count as each course arrives. You can just stack the boluses for each course on top of each other. The only thing it won’t do isd allow you to stack a second extended bolus onto on that is running.
i’ve always been wary of insulin stacking. do i have to re-test my BGs before i press the B button like i do for my WIZARD, or do i just estimate and go for it?
You shouldn’t need to test. In fact if you are doing this sort of “running bolus” you should AVOID entering a BG into your Bolus Wizard. The pump will remember you have IOB from your recent previous bolus, but it WON’T know you still have the “carbs on board” from the earlier course. It will therefore try to subtract the IOB whereas if you are starting the main course of a 3-course dinner or eating an extra bit of food, the IOB from the previous bolus will be needed to deal with what you just ate.
Press the B button (or go into Bolus through the menu system), enter your estimated carb count, but DO NOT enter a BG reading. If you just navigate to the next step, the pump will calculate the estimated bolus based on your I:C ratio and carb count input, but will not make a correction for your BG. I used to be a Medtronic pumper but now use an Animas which ignores IOB if you don’t enter a BG. I think the Mectronic does the same, but you might want to check. If the pump INSISTS on subtracting IOB you might have to do the calculation yourself and “go for it”
When I started pumping, I used to religiously enter a BG reading for every bolus. I now recognize that carb-counting is not an exact science. Even with something that seems simple like mashed potato, it’s still an eyeball estimate so as long as my BG is somewhere near to target any corrections the pump suggest for BG are small compared to the error in estimating carbs. .
Joel
sam, are you a “friend of bill’s?”
i like that: “KISS” good suggestion.
I’m not sure what you mean by “friend of bill’s” ? @Daisy_Mae
no worries. its just an expression used in Alcoholics Anonymous to let another know that you are sober (from alcohol/drugs), because the founder was named bill wilson; since the program of A.A. is anonymous, no last names are used to identify yourself with. sometimes people say, “Hi, i’m Daisy Mae, and i’m an alcoholic”.…… anyways, its a commonly used catch phrase/code : I’m a “friend of Bill’s” ( associate myself w/ bill w.)
its lingo, just like what we have on TuD. hardly anyone but us w/ D understands our “shorthands” like BG, D, dx, Endo, PWD, IOB…etc.
hope this helps.
one other thing i forgot to mention; there are many acronyms in AA. one of them is KISS, meaning, as you stated, “Keep it Simple Stupid.”
I see… Lol no I am not a friend of Bill’s but I might get to meet him someday.
sam19,
unfortunately, Bill is deceased. but as a group, we live on one day at a time. and for those of us, well, we’re all friends of Bill. some of like to be, some of us want to be, and some of us refuse to be. in the end, though, as this relates to D. it is healthier not to drink than to drink and take insulin. i prefer the former.
i have been pumping for 14+ years, and i never knew that i could do this w/ the suspend feature!!! if i ever read the direction book, i don’t remember. what i do remember is my cde showing me how to use the pump. obviously she was not very thorough. thank you very much.
the only times that i have used the suspend feature is when i am crashing and i want to stop my basal delivery. my assumption is that IOB is something that you cannot take back. once the bolus is delivered, it is in me. so now any low corrections will be done w/ glucose tabs.
[quote=“Daisy_Mae, post:30, topic:47426, full:true”]
i have been pumping for 14+ years, and i never knew that i could do this w/ the suspend feature!!! if i ever read the direction book, i don’t remember. what i do remember is my cde showing me how to use the pump. obviously she was not very thorough. thank you very much.
the only times that i have used the suspend feature is when i am crashing and i want to stop my basal delivery. my assumption is that IOB is something that you cannot take back. once the bolus is delivered, it is in me. so now any low corrections will be done w/ glucose tabs.
[/quote]14+ years and not having much success! Maybe you could pull the “direction book” out and have a look so you know what all the buttons and settings are. Do you know how to basal test? I’ve been wondering because you seem to bounce around a lot and if you could make sure your basal is solid then those experiments you like to do might work out better. Do you know how to test and then apply the other necessary settings on your pump? If those are not correct that is another reason why you may be bouncing around. It’s a shame that you need to constantly correct both high and low bg’s. Maybe the pump is not working for you, I know MDI was suggested already in another thread but I wonder if you have considered it.
i don’t know if this will be helpful, but i will put it out there:
i take a medication called Clozeril, an anti-psychotic, for paranoid schizophrenia, as well as Prednisone for Graves Disease. i also take other medications, all of which place havoc upon my BGs. i ask questions on this forum to self-educate and find support, and to help manage my D as best as i can. i was on MDI for years before i started using my pump. the pump and the sensor are wonderful tools which i use to the best of my ability w/ what i’ve got on my plate to deal with (no pun intended). since i have been on TuD, i have learned so much about myself and so much about how to care for myself. i guess that if you do not know the whole picture, your best intentions to help me might prevent you from seeing whatever else is added to my mix besides just trying to bolus for a slice of pizza.
i greatly appreciate your suggestions. i welcome any ideas that might help me to improve the quality of my life.
It’s just that all of your troubles seem to be based around WHEN and HOW TO BOLUS, and then we learned that you don’t even know what all the buttons are on the pump. I have read your post for paranoid schizophrenia, and all of the others you have offered. I will not stop suggesting you get that manual out and learn about your pump. You don’t seem willing to answer the questions asked regarding your ability to manage your pump…that is what I call a “tell”. Pumps are not for everyone, certainly not if one does not know about the device. I bolus for pizza all the time and learned what works by testing and watching my bg. I don’t even have a CGM and was able to ‘figure’ it out. I might be different because I don’t find it necessary to make a headline about it 
@ karen57: Hopefully I will be getting my pump (Omnipod) very soon. My endo is filling out the paper work and insurance processing is taking their time. How do you bolus for pizza using the pump? The past few times, (only about twice) that I had pizza I was using MDI, I “guesstimated” the carb. The BG looked decent at 2 hour post meal. Correction was needed at about 3 hour after first bite of pizza.
I bolus for all meals at the start of the meal. The pizza is home made from a box crust and the toppings are veggies and a little cheese over olive oil. I guess I just don’t have the infamous spike I read about. When I was on vacation I had a nice plate of pizza (three big slices!!) and just bolused by guess - no problem there either. On pizza night, I do make sure I log some miles and get a good work out so that I’ve already burned off the pizza before I ever eat it. Every now and then I need to do a correction…not just for pizza, though. I suspect that most folks pizza is a protein load as well as the carbs in the crust. Or pizza is just another one of Life’s unanswered questions.
when i don’t enter my BG, and i am simply bolusing w/out using the wizard, the amount of insulin i enter (for example 2 units) ( which i figure w/ a I:C ratio of 1:10) will account for 20 gms of carbs.doing this always made me nervous, b/c i thought this was what “insulin stacking” was. so, i rarely did it. this is why i started this topic in the first place. the situation just arose enough for me to wonder.
thanks,
Daisy Mae
Are you now aware of what insulin stacking really is, daisy? FYI, it’s when you repeatedly bolus, ESPECIALLY for knocking down a high bg, sooner than the duration action of the insulin (ie, sooner than roughly 4 hours apart, but that value can range up and down an hour). I have done zillions of stacked boluses, but then again, I’m not too concerned about lows. My wife would never ever bolus like I do because she’s different–lows intimidate her, as I know it does others. I never would encourage others to do what I do.
I have no problem with the idea of stacked boluses as long as the PWD is committed to keeping close track of BGs until the scenario unwinds. Getting distracted by a 100 other things, not monitoring BGs closely, and ending up driving can be a recipe for disaster.
1 Like
With a Medtronic Minimed 640G for an “Easy Bolus” you use the up arrow as explained on page 82 of the user manual.