All is well Zoe …it did get my mind working and had my say about Advocacy as well
( OT???) and hopefully Riz will join the Canadian Group !
Hi Riz,
I too share your fear of lows, but changing to a pump helped me ALOT.
If you’re on Lantus, I know exactly what you are talking about re: nighttime drops. With that monster I was afraid to go to bed with a reading of less than 14, because Lantus works too hard at night. I had scary drops where I would take a dose…and it would work IMMEDIATELY, dropping me by 4 bg/15 minutes (that’s in mmol/L). I have a pump now, running humalog, and while I am having issues with humalog not working fast enough, nights are much better. The pump runs solely on Humalog (fast acting) insulin, and gives in .05 increments. You can program exactly how much Humalog you receive for your basal (slow acting) insulin for each half hour period; and at any time you can hit ‘temporary basal’ and override the program.
I have a Medtronics Minimed Paradigm pump. Go to http://www.minimed.ca/store.aspx (that’s the Canadian site; I too am Canadian) and check it out. They will help you figure out how to fund one through insurance. Don’t initiate this through your doctor, go to Medtronics directly. And they will send a nurse to show you how to use the pump, all-day training session, and once you adapt to it you will never go back to needles! Trust me…if you can, do it. It’s so worth it!
Best wishes, message me if you have any questions! Both me and my mom are type 1’s with about 20 years experience.
I looked at the MM.ca site and they look like the same needles we have here? I’ve had a few pretty massive gushers of blood from it, like I had to lie on the floor putting pressure on my abdomen for 10 minutes to make it stop? I do them somewhere where there’s no carpeting.
It’s funny because I went to a new endo for the first time today and he’s the first one that really seems to get it. His office is very, very pump friendly and for that I am grateful. He understands the phobia and is willing to take things slowly with me. It’ll take some work on my part too (like skipping breakfast one day, lunch another, and so on) to start fresh. He says, and I agree, that I’ve lost touch with how it works. I hate having this disease and denial is my friend who only stabs me in the back later on. ha ha He says that if we do the hard work now, the payoff will come later. It sounds like a plan.
I have been through spells where I am afraid to drive. One time I was seeing a shrink (figures) who was pretty far away. She only had night appointments and I, being a horrible diabetic at the time, didn’t have sugar or a meter with me. I got it in my head that I was going low and started to freak out. I found an old peanut butter cup left over from Halloween in the backseat and ate it, knowing it wouldn’t be enough sugar to cover a low, but in my warped mind, I was happy until I got to a store. I got home and my BS was over 300. At least now I always have sugar in some form and a meter. That incident was over 10 years ago. Live and learn. I plan on learning a lot more and living a long time, hopefully long enough to see a cure.
I am sorry to take long to write, I read every message and understand it !
I fully understand where you are coming from Riz. The lows are indeed bad, and very scary, ask me how I know. Running higher can bring security in the short term, but the long term is an entirely different result, I am a very very clear example of this life crippling and regretful mistake.
After a number of hypoglycemic accidents in my distant past, I ended up running my self high to stay away from the lows, running A1C’s from the ranges of 8 to 10%, and it became a very very bad habit and life style, for years… While it helped me stay secure back then from the lows, the long term conquences have really caught up with me 
Fast foward to now, I’ve won my self gastroparesis and Neuropathy as the result, and I basically put my self in a pre-destroyed condition. I’ve done my self irreversible damage and I will never be the same again.
If its early here for you, there is still time to avoid what I have done, take my word for it.
While I cannot give the best advice for good BG control, what I’m simply saying is seek all the advice you can here to help you’re self.
I really hope you can work it all out and get you’re numbers to stay in normal ranges more, I wish you the best of luck.