Had my shot 1.25 hours late. Ate breakfast (not a huge one, eggs and potatoes) and sugar shot up to over 300. Exercised for an hour. Walked two miles. Sugar was still over 350. Then took afternoon shot. Sugar is down to 284, but I am not going to eat until it goes down below 150. Has this ever happened to any of you guys? What do you do?
You need more insulin. It takes much more insulin to bring down a blood sugar once it is high. If you forget to take a shot before eating, the amount you will need later won’t necessarily be the same unfortunately. It also sounds like you need to learn how to take correction doses, instead of just dosing according to a schedule. It can take more than one shot sometimes to bring down a nasty high.
Ditto what the earlier poster said. Many times this has happened to me.
Hi @ame_e—nice to see you here again! The one trick I use is the one you’ve already tried: steady exercise with insulin on board. I’d also agree that higher spikes seem to require proportionately higher correction values. My correction ratio is 1:15 but that’s only good up to 180 or so, and after that it’s like there’s more inertia to be overcome.
Of course a lot depends on what kind of regimen you’re actually on. I’m a little confused when you say you took your “afternoon” shot, implying that’s part of your regular routine. It sounds more like an R/N, sliding-scale regimen rather than standard basal-bolus MDI where you’re taking a long-acting like Lantus and bolusing for each meal individually according to your carb ratio. Can you clarify?
Try what I do all the time. Take much more insulin than a correction bolus call for. Worst case is that it will come down too much and you will eat something later. Not bad for a high BG.
Thank you for all your responses. I do not know what R/N is DrBB. I probably should have exercised after rather than before taking my shot, because that will bring it down a lot, like 100 points or so. I usually take my pre-meal shot around 12:30, and take somewhere between 2 and 5 units depending on my sugar. Today because of the lateness of everything, I took 5 units and it still didn’t go down until much later to the 230s. I took a unit extra at dinner for correction. I am very sensitive to insulin, I overcorrect and then I crash, crash, crash. So will test again before bed and do another correction if I have to. I am on shots, don’t have a pump. Thank you all.
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Well, count yourself blessed. It’s kind of a throwback but there’s been some discussion of it here recently so I guess I had it on my brain. I guess you just meant your pre-lunch bolus, so that’s good. And yeah, exercise really turbo-charges glucose uptake, so a little insulin goes a long way, but you do have to have taken it first to get that effect.
One thing I read on on of the threads here is to divide the dosage in half and take two injections. For some reason that seems to work for me.
Thanks. I am done with late breakfasts for now! My friend who I go out with will understand.
And at 1 a.m. yesterday it was 45… so, so, so, so, so typical…
A.