I carry both kinds of insulin with me at all times, even though I only inject the Lantus each night. I just don’t want to be caught without it! Maybe I should keep them in separate pouches…
It does, but a Lantus pen is more difficult to get covered by insurance than a Novolog pen, since it’s used less frequently.
I have done this before myself! Luckily it was at breakfast time so I could just load up and enjoy myself. And it was not nearly the huge amount you had to deal with! But don’t feel bad…I think it is more common than we think, especially among pen users.
im glad to see these these problems in one way. and that way is that there is a solution to this. i work for a company that invents mostley medical equipment prducts, but my bosswho is type 1 has recentley bin working on geting his patent for colored insulin… yes you read that right colored
insulin…we are 100% sure that this product will bring down the risk of this varey serious mistake by allmost 100% but just convincing the right people of that is the hardest part… we are all hoping that we get the patent so we can start changing diabetic peoples lifes. please let me know what you think of this idea.
I think even coloered lettering on the vials and pens would work also~ blue perhaps for the long acting basal insulins and red for the fast acting…fortunately, I haven’t had this happen to me yet but I have come close! Colored insulin is a cool idea but then you’d need to make sure the dye/coloring is safe as I’m sure there are people allergic to some dyes…
yes your right. studys would need to be done…
When I was on MDI’s still, I gave Novolog instead of Lantus. Very scary. I had very little sweet stuff in my house to eat, but I grabbed it and ate what I had and then (my blood sugar hadn’t started dropping yet), drove to a nearby gas station and bought a Mt. Dew to help.
I have both the Novolog and Levemir pens and to avoid that I keep my novolog in a pouch and levemir in the box from the pharmacy. If I did not I am sure I would just grab the wrong one before bed. There was an article that I read today about adding dye to one type of insulin so this would not happen. All the follow up posts said that this happens more often than we may think. Glad you are ok.
http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2008/06/26/5805.html
The remark about Lantus and accidentally hitting blood vessels is interesting. If this is the case then it should not happen with Levemir which binds to haemoglobin first. Just a thought…