No, I'm not abandoning Humalog (God no!). However, being the disaster preparedness kind of guy I am, and never knowing when the Zombie Apocalypse is gonna hit, I was thinking I should get up to speed with controlling my BG with some regular, "just in case".
I'd feel better knowing I know what to do and how it's different, in the inordinately unlikely circumstance that that's all I have available.
So, thinking of popping by Walmart and picking up a bottle of R, and then experimenting over the weekend, to characterize how I react to it, how my BG rides, etc.
Any and all advice, thoughts, stories, jokes, insults, scolding, or love the experts here want to send my way through this discussion will be warmly received!
Hmmm...interesting...well, I used Humulin R for about 15 years or so until Humalog came out. I can't imagine why you'd want to though, because it's incredibly slow. You can find conversion tables on the internet if you search "humalog humulin conversion". Keep in mind that it needs to be refrigerated, so in the Zombie Apocalypse scenario, this would only be a viable solution for 28 days or so if our electricity goes out. My extreme scenario is being stranded on a deserted island, and in both scenarios I figure I'm pretty much screwed.
I took R for many years as well. The main thing I remember about it is that you want to take it about a half hour before you eat. With Humalog, I take it just before I sit down at the table. Regular needs a longer lead time before it kicks in. A little less spontaneous but it WILL work.
Are you planning on a total survivalist experiment? Are you going to switch to MDI? I'll give you my comments on MDI and then comment on pump use.
When I started insulin three years ago it was with NPH/R from Wallie World. If you follow a low carb diet you may actually find it has a better profile to match your meals. My experience is that it is essentially the same potency as Humalog so your total bolus doses should be the same, but you may notice some differences as due to the different action times. I bolus 30-60 minutes before a meal, particularly if I am a little high before the meal. For corrections I did an intramuscular inject R into my quads, some people use their delts. I consider R and NPH pretty stable and I actually have old unopened vials in my fridge that I can't pull myself to throw away even through they are expired. I suspect that if I ran dry I could still use them.
Now as to the pump. I don't think there is any reason you can't use R in the pump, you can even use U500 R in your pump. It suspect it will require certain adjustments to the duration of action and you may find detailed basal profiles as well as ratios need adjustment. In the end, you may find it just not worth all the effort to figure it all out if you are just doing a "feasibility" experiment.
I am going to do this via injection, while leaving my Omnipod on and simply turned off (well, almost "off" -- basal set to 0.05U/hr, which for me with an IC 1:4 is indistinguishable from "off" in any bolus calculations).
My T2 pancreas can just barely handle my basal needs most of the day, so that won't be a problem.
I'm intrigued by thy intramuscular injections... Thinking I might do a very conservative experiment with this with Humalog first for correction to see how that all plays with my body. What size needle do you use for an intramuscular?
