…have to live with the trainer’s/my doctors settings? Since Tuesday, my first pod day (yes, only two days ago), I’ve spent almost all of my time 50-100 points over where I want to be, or more. The trainer is making tiny incremental adjustments and I want to give this thing a real chance, but I’m about to turn the guardrails off and start manually rage bolusing.
So. How long did you give the trainer to get it right before you took over?
Thanks!
No one here can advocate for you to defy doctors’ orders. You’ll find most of us are all for taking control of your own diabetes, though. It’s too dynamic of a condition to be complacent.
Personally, I refused outright to enter what the doctor ordered. I was only taking one injection of lantus, but he read the chart wrong and prescribed double the basal I needed. I told the trainer that I would use those settings during training if we had to, but that I wouldn’t actually deliver that basal. She looked at my suggested doses I had already entered and sent a note back to the doctor authorizing the changes.
I’ve since changed doctor, but the new one has never once even asked what my basal is, let alone advised in what it should be. I like it that way!
Collect detailed records. 2 weeks. That should be long enough to steer the car in the right direction. The more data you collect (MANUAL FINGER STICKS), the better they AND you can do.
You need to be careful. There are really bad mistakes you can make - especially if your new.
Course tuning of the basals first. Then, fine tuning.
You test basals by establishing periods of time where there is NO bolus insulin active (nothing for meals, nothing for correction). That means that if you dont deliver insulin for 4 hours (sometimes 2 hours), you can start testing basal. Thats hard. Takes days to get enough data.
Notice that in this data set, there are no basal test opportunities. I’m eating too often and delivering insulin too often.
The initial basal rate that my CDE calculated didn’t work out at all. I adjusted the basal rate quickly. I have never seen this or any other CDE again. This was 10 years ago.
They usually build in a safety factor.
If you have been D for a while, you can be more aggressive with changes. If you are still somewhat new to it all, be a little more patient.
When I got the omnipod, I started using it before training. But I had been D for a few million years already.
Thanks, all! For some background, I’ve been managing as a misdiagnosed T2 for 12 years. In June I was diagnosed with LADA and put on insulin with a V-Go patch/pump sort of thing. So I was used to managing mealtime insulin manually.
I’ll be glad for the Omnipod features soon, but at the moment I’m high and crabby and TIRED. 
I had already preprogrammed my Omnipod before the trainer got there with my endo/doctors recommendations. I liked mine better and kept them. My endo never said a word about it.
I’m thinking I just need to do that. Maybe I’ll be patient a few more days, just to be polite, and then shake things up. She wouldn’t want me to call her on Christmas after all, right? 
One thing I had heard from people and it worked well. Small changes and give it a couple of days because we can vary daily anyway. Unless of course it’s causing a low then a correction needs to be done right away.
The way to check later is to fast if you’re up to it and see if your levels stay even keel, feasibly you should go to bed with the number you woke up at with no eating for your basal rate. Some people just fast for pockets of time to see if it their basals are right for that time period.
