I’ve now been on Victoza for a little over 24 hours. I took my second shot of 0.3mg (5 clicks) at 11:50am today. This is a run down of what I experienced the first 24 hours on the medication.
My first shot of Victoza started working faster than I had expected and by the time I got around to lunch about 20 minutes later I was feeling a bit of nausea, a slight headache, and a bit of disorientation. Everything but the headache went away after I ate my bowl of soup and stick of string cheese. All of these were mild symptoms. My basal was reduced by 25% at this time and I reduced my meal dose from 8 units to 6 units. My sugars had a slight rise (about 30 points) for the first half hour or 45 minutes after eating and then started falling quickly. I ended up eating two rice crispy treat bars (I work in a teen center, our food choices are a little strange) within an hour after eating and reducing my basal by 40% and that turned my falling sugars around. About 3.5 hours after eating I was experiencing rising sugars and ended up giving myself a couple of corrections over the next 2 hours. I don’t think my sugars ever rose much above 180 though which is amazing given the reduced basal insulin and the reduced lunch shot.
I ate dinner around 5:30 as I was starting to feel slightly nauseous again. I had one slice of white pizza with spinach (I picked most of the spinach off as I’m not a big fan). I bolus for 25 grams of carbs for the one slice of pizza, half delivered immediately and half over the next two hours. I was still a little hungry after the slice of pizza so I had rolled a couple pieces of cold cuts and cheese and at them as well. I did find my sugars starting to climb a couple hours after eating so I increased my basal a little, only reducing it by 30% this time and delivered a correction bolus. By bedtime I was starting to go low again and had an ice cream bar. I typically have my worst lows overnight so I went back to the 40% reduced basal.
In the morning I woke up with a blood sugar of 240. It was a pain because it never feels good to wake up that high but I would rather be there than very low. I corrected for it. I also increased my basal to a reduced basal of only 25%. This was around 8:30. My sugars started to fall slowly after that but were around 65 at 10:30 when I had an apple for breakfast. Since my sugars were lower I decided to only bolus for 10g of carbs.
At 11:50 I took my second dose of Victoza. My blood glucose was about 126 at this point. I noticed that within 5 minutes I was starting to feel the slight headache I had noticed yesterday. At the time of this writing (1:00) that headache is nearly gone. At noon I ate a ham and cheese lunchable and bolused for the 21 grams of carbs it said were in the package. I was feeling some nausea at the end of lunch and though it might be because I had not eaten that much so I also had a granola bar. While I was eating the granola bar I felt better but the nausea returned shortly after it’s finished. At this time (1:00) the nausea is nearly gone. It was never severe, just sort of an unsettled stomach.
Right now my sugars are back up at 225. I think this is due to the granola bar which I did not bolus for. I have just delivered my 5 units of correction insulin. We’ll see how that works out.
Overall the last 24 hours have gone well. I’ve definitely needed less insulin and my dinner last night was much smaller than typical. The side affects, headache and nausea have been present but are barely noticable and easily worked through. So far I’d say that this trial is somewhat successful. Just as a baseline with weight my scale read 223.5 lbs. yesterday. We’ll see if that comes down at all. You’ll hear from me again tomorrow!
