Weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced BG-wise, after 35 years with T1. Had kind of a busy night last night, and somehow managed to forget that I’d gotten a low-reservoir warning and needed to change out my infusion set before going to bed or I’d run out in the night. So I get up this morning, usual routine, check BG and get ready to bolus for breakfast. Gratifying numbers: CGM: 113, fingerstick: 98–great! Only… um… there’s no insulin in my pump. Because it ran dry last night. According to the alarm history, I was running on fumes as of about 10:30pm. And I have pretty severe DP, such that I have to set a basal rate of 3u/hr starting at 3am. How the HECK can I be @ 98 this morning???
Hypotheses:
The convergence of my birthday with World Diabetes Day made the universe decide to give me a T1 vacation for a present.
Congratulations! Not sure how old you are but many of my T1 friends have found that their insulin need got much smaller as they got older, especially if they had been low carbing for a long time. They got to the point where they could actually eat small amounts of fruit or carby veggies such as corn without dosing extra for them. I find this is true for me as well. I will be 78 next month.
In this past week, I’ve had a day or two where my sugar repeatedly went low despite glucose tabs, other sugar and assorted carbs. I’m normally doing low carb, so this was unexplainable. Yet during this same week I also had several days where my sugar was going very high despite addition insulin. This happens periodically, separated by long periods of near flatlining.
Happy birthday and World Diabetes Day, @DrBB! I’ve had that kind of thing happen before. Sometimes it’s hard to explain things diabetes. We don’t know what we don’t know. Some things will remain a mystery.
Or you could be trending more insulin sensitive as @Willow4 suggested. Be open to reducing other insulin delivery parameters if other things start pointing that way.
The weird thing is that, while it gives me a “Low” warning I don’t ever seem to get an alert when it zeroes out. Certainly doesn’t mind giving me an occlusion alarm other times! But in any case that might explain a lot. I can see the reservoir is empty when I change it out, but I guess there must be quite a bit still in the tubing (32") if it continues to push that through.
FYI, it’s an old pager-style mmt 723 Paradigm, if that matters. I reverted to it after giving up on the 670G, because as far as manual mode goes it’s actually better (i.e., far less annoying) than the 670.
I had forgotten about this aspect, even though I’ve been using a MM722 for the last two years. I actually like this design idea. Prior to me using the 722, I used an Animas Pjng for eight years and zero meant zero! It alarmed when it hit zero.
Well done, @MM1! I like your logical approach. By the way, in a pinch, out of pump insulin and unable to load more for a few hours, I have put air in the cartridge and used it to push the insulin already in my infusion set into my site. I did disconnect from the site while doing this and watched at the disconnected end that the air in my cartridge was capable of delivering insulin out the other end.
This is not something I would encourage but would use again if circumstances left me no choice. Nowadays I’m much better at always having my insulin and supplies with me.
I’m on a Minimed 523 and, I believe, it has almost 20 units left after the pump says it’s down to zero. I usually don’t push it but I went to bed once when it had only 1 unit left and I was too darned tired to change it…I use about .95 units per hour at night, and the next morning I ended up being able to bolus for a 60g carb breakfast with no problem (and yes, then I changed it!) Every once in a while if I’m extremely exhausted or in pain, I get sloppy, but since I have never produced ketones, for me the worst that’ll happen is I’ll be a bit high for a couple of hours.
I think it’s that big glass of okra water you drank before bed!!! And yes of course cinnamon. And did you get your flu shot? Those are evil, oh wait I think I’m in the wrong forum…
