Just one of those days

1

Well… its been one of those impossible days and I just feel like complaining about it. so here was my awesome day

10:00am: I got woken up by my mom’s “wake up now before your blood sugar gets so low you’ll never wake up” speech. She does this every weekend. I crawl out of bed check. I’m at 100 (so once again, I get woken up for no reason.) I eat 2 sausage biscuitsfor breakfast and take 5 units of humalog.

12:30pm: I make myself a frozen dinner for lunch. The package SAID 82 carbs. My bloodsugar was at 170, so I take 9 units of humalog.

12:50pm: bloodsugar is at 65, so I eat 2 sugar tabs and a granola bar.

1:00pm: I’m still not feeling better so I recheck and I’m at 55. This time I drink a half a cup of regular coke.

1:10pm: REALLY feeling crappy. I recheck again… and I’m at 37 (o_o) This time I get MORE coke and a cup of ice cream. At this point I don’t care about the consequences, I just want my bloodsugar back up.

1:30pm: I recheck again and I’m at 275… great. I take 4 units of humalog and ride my bike for a few miles.

3:30pm: feeling crappy so I check again and I’m at 396. I take 8 units of humalog and go take a nap to make up for this morning.

7:00pm: I wake up and recheck… 414 :eek: so I take ANOTHER 8 units, drink about 5 cups of water and skip dinner.

10:30pm: My mom hears that I didn’t eat dinner and yells at me, then forces me to go to McDonalds with her. I check before we go and I’m at 220. I get a chicken strip meal, and take 9 units.

1:30am: I’m getting ready for bed so I check… 294 GAH!!! AND to make everything better, that was my last test strip. I know I’ll get yelled at if I tell my mom that I’m out, so I’ll just sneak to walmart tomorrow when no one is paying attention. I take 5 units of humalog and 24 units of lantus, write this post, and go to bed.

good FREAKING night world!!!

2

Really crappy day. Realize not what you feel like hearing, but perhaps time to revisit your ratios. I also skip meals with highs. Though a correction added to bolus should work, it usually doesn’t for me. My guess is that BG is continuing upward, so the correction hasn’t done enough.

I had lows like yours from Lantus. When it peaked, I’d plummet. I took split doses because I was worried about sinking overnight. But, even split & lower doses didn’t prevent staggering hypos. Is 24 units your usual dose?

Hope Sunday is much better!

3

I used to be a big granola bar fan but they are 1) a ton of carbs and 2) designed to release slowly, for hiking and stuff, so they hit over a long period of time. I hardly ever eat when I’m at 170. I usually bolus and do something until I start to feel a bit buzzed from the insulin. This is, of course, not entirely safe but if my BG is 170, I don’t perceive that I need food. Until I started skipping dinner before running longer runs, I hadn’t been “hungry” for years b/c of the non-stop eating. I look at wanting to eat as “munchies” but skip it or wait on it if I’ waiting.

Another thing is that shots> 7U of insulin “deploy” more irregularly, because of the fluid dynamics (?) of the bigger glob of insulin? This is explained in a bit more detail in Bernstein’s book but in general the “standard teenage diet” might be something to try to rein in? If the breakfast insulin is still “coooking” at lunchtime and you test and eat, it might explain the massive drop afterwards? The food was there and the insulin was there but they weren’t on the same page. Then the sugar might’ve gotten it “close” but the granola bar “waited” until after your bike ride to really make it’s presence apparent?

4

I’m going to see how today goes before I make any adjustments. If its still between 37-414 I’ll make an adjustment… somewhere

And yes 24 is my usual dose of lantus. I don’t really get hypos at night or if i sleep in anymore, so it really ticks me off when mom wakes me up. I used to get severe lows often because my moms insulin logic for the first 10 years of my diagnosis went like this.

I’m going high all day, therefore my lantus is off. If I’m going low in the night then that means I need a bigger snack. Eventually it got to the point where i was taking 32units of lantus and eating about 45 carbs uncovered before I went to bed. now I usually eat 15-20 carbs uncovered and that seems to work.

5

Granola bars usually work for me though. most of the time, the 2 tabs and bar is the perfect way to bring up a hypo. the sugar works to bring up the low and the granola bar counteracts any left over insulin that might still be working in my system. (usually)



you are probably right about the stacking insulin thing. I just thought “if I’m 170 now, theres no way I gave myself too much insulin…” But i like to feel better about myself and just blame the package :smiley:

Splitting my shots might work, but then I would be taking about 12 shots a day… idk if i want to go through a box of needles in 4 days. that could get expensive fast.

6

My mom was the same way with waking me up for the longest time! She still checks on me to make sure I get up each morning (I’m almost 30). Did you used to be on NPH? I think for those of us who grew up taking NPH with the possibility of severe overnight/morning lows (and especially for those of us who had a few severe lows, as I did), it can be really hard for parents to realize that Lantus is different—especially since they no longer manage diabetes themselves. My mom did everything when I was a kid but would have NO CLUE about the pump, and says so.

I hope tomorrow is better for you!

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I wasn’t on nph, but i WAS on ultralente. that took almost a week to see if you got your dose right because it worked for about 40 hours. I have no idea HOW she managed to keep my a1c less than 7.5 (the standard for children of the day) with that craziness

8

I’m starting to think my pen went bad. I woke up the next morning at 305, took a shot, and an hour later I was at 355 (without eating anything)

This time I switched insulin pens and it I went down to 123 in about an hour

9

I used to reuse needles until I wore the paint off, more because I try to avoid heaping up diabetes garbage whenever possible and I’m lazy. I still have 1000s of them in a giant box. I’ve used them to put nail polish earrings on Barbies and various other little bizzare projects but you may want to talk to your doc about it? Then again a doc will probably be like “no way” but I think a lot of people reuse them to some degree? I didn’t have any infections in like 25 years.

Re the granola, granola take me like 2-3 hours to “deploy” so the granola bar you ate at 1:00 while you were tripping on the low probably didn’t hit until 3:30, precisely when you had that other high, perhaps also having overloaded the treatment for the lows. The kitchen can be a dangerous place when I’m hypo. Once when I was in high school, I put an ice cream carton in the broiler to thaw it out so I could eat it faster and lit it on fire.

These days, I set the kitchen timer on the microwave to 20 minutes and wait until then to test and sometimes, I let the timer go off and wait another 5-10 minutes to be sure how sugar# 1 will have hit/ metabolized/ etc.? I think the 15 and 15 is too many carbs and most of the time seem to manage to treat stuff with 5-10G of carbs instead. It can make the insulin “buzz” a bit mellower and eliminate some of the “rollercoastering” like you are describing? I like granola bars a lot but I don’t get the best results with them. There’s these Kind bars they sell at Whole Foods and the Almond Macadamia version is only 11G of carbs, you might try checking out the “nuttier” ones as they tend to be less carby? The extremely tasty “green” “Nature (sic) Valley” ones are like 45G of carbs for a two pack?

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How strange… diabetes and sugar swings all over the map.

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Timmy,

Speaking of syringes, I order from www.americandiabeteswholesale.com. Was less for me to order from them than with isurance co-pay from the pharmacy. Through 10/31, there’s 5% off. Coupon promo is THANKS10E.



After correcting a low, I eat a small amount of protein to keep things level.