I left town suddenly tonight and forgot to bring my lantus with me! I have no long-acting insulin right now and I’m freaking out. What can I do for tonight to get by without it? I usually take 12u at bedtime, but all the pharmacies are closed!
Do you have/are you near a 24h pharmacy? Your doctor should have a service who will contact him, or an on-call colleague, immediately, and they would be able to rx you supplies, via phone direct to the pharmacy, for you to pick up.
oh wait sorry i just noticed you wrote all pharmacies are closed… you can’t find a single one?? do you have your short-acting?
do you have your fast acting with you ? If so you can take a small amount very few hours and it will compensate.
kind of like mimicking a pump…i was thinking the same thing. it could get you by. even so, maybe you should just call your doctor and speak with him/her. certainly you will want to stay well-hydrated.
Anthony is correct! Pretty much what a pump does. I do like .9U/ hr for my basal insulin so maybe break down your basal into chunks and fire away. Maybe an ER could hook you up too? If it’s some kind of rx issue, you might score some NPH for $20/ bottle too?
I once went all day without any fast acting insulin and I ate twice. Its not going to be pretty but you can get through it. Lantus is only to maintain your liver producing sugars which if your only taking 12 units doesnt sound like much. I think you will be alright with taking very small dosages of fast acting like suggested. Try not to stress about it because we all know stressing makes your sugar increase…Good luck!
Does insulin require a prescription? Maybe it varies by state.
I agree with the advice of the previous comments about using several doses of rapid acting insulin. That should work well. I would set my alarm and get up a few times to check your BG and then dose insulin.
To estimate your dose I would divide your total daily dose of Lantus by 24 hours. This would give you the approximate units/hour of the short acting insulin. I would set my first alarm for 2 hours after going to bed if you take “basal insulin” right before bed.
It’ll be interesting to see how you do. Good luck!
I did that once and my parents went to a hospital and explained my situation and they got me the shot i needed (for a price of course, but it is an option)
So, how did it work out?
I had to take some correction humalog before bed. My fasting blood sugar was 158 this morning, which is not too bad, but not ideal… But I think if I can take 1u of humalog every 2 hours or so I should be fine until I can get some lantus in me. I’ll be able to call the endo at 9 and ask him to call in a prescription to my nearest pharmacy.
Thanks you guys! I was really afraid it would shoot up to like 300 without lantus for the night…glad to see I was wrong.
Great to hear everything is ok. 158 is not too shabby.
And don’t forget, Walmart sells NPH without a prescription in every state (except Alaska). Many in big areas have a 24 hour pharmacy and you can just pick up a vial and a box of syringes and be good. While NPH is not optimal as a basal insulin, it is better than nothing.
Same thing happened to me last week except I was in a different country and was away for 6 days. I took out my Lantus the first night and almost fainted when I realized I had picked up the wrong pen when packing. I thought I’d taken the full pen with 300 units but instead had packed the almost empty one with 13 units. I usually take 21 units every night.
After panicking for a while, I calmed down and reminded myself that people on a pump do not take basal insulin, so for the next 6 days I would have to simulate pumping while on MDI.
Thankfully I had lots of quick-acting insulin with me so just checked a lot and tried to mimic the effect of a pump. The first morning, I was afraid I was going to wake up in DKA but my morning fasting BG was 140 which is not so great but also nothing to really freak out over. My morning FBG was consistently 130-140 throughout the six days without Lantus. It is normally 90-100.
I also take 12 units of Lantus but in the morning. So if I took 1u of Humalog every 2 hours that would be the equivalent?
So relieved you worked it out!!! Have you gotten your hands on what you need now?
Your arithmetic looks good to me. The important thing is to closely monitor your BG with many more fingersticks until you’re comfortable that things are in control. I know that’s harder to do through the night but I would set my alarm for every 2-3 hours to check and dose as needed.
It’s about 2:20 PM CST and how are you doing? – your blood sugars still running good??? I’ve been reading the thread and am just kinda worried about you.
weird thing, last night i forgot to take lantus (usually take 14 unit), i slept great & woke up with 88 fasting bg, and all day my bg was in the 80s…so today was only 9 units of rapid insulin. So the advice is just control your food portions for the day.
I got it all figured out! I managed to get the pharmacy to call my doctor yesterday and got the lantus that I needed. I split my dose in 2 and now I’m back on my normal schedule. I didn’t get it until about 2PM (EST) so I did have to keep an eye on my bg most of the morning. But it wasn’t too bad, it was just weird to see how it wouldn’t go down all morning; but at least I could keep it from going up!
Weird! The only other time I’ve forgotten my lantus was a night after a heavy dinner so I did wake up to see a bg of almost 300 that morning. That’s why I was really afraid to go without it again!
Do you think you were going low and then high to compensate with 14 units? I’m pretty sure that was happening to me when I used to take 16 units because I would wake up between 180 and 250 every morning when I was taking that much.