Tomorrow will officially be one week on Victoza. I am still at a dosage of 0.6mgs, 10 clicks, and I will be until Monday when I will increase to 0.9mgs., 15 clicks. I have so far found that my high blood sugars are more regulated (not quite as high) and I am eating somewhat less, and I have lost a bit of weight. Not to bad for just one week. The detailed account of the last two days is as follows:
After Karate on Monday my blood sugar continued to rise until it hit about 200 at 9:45. I took a bolus of 4 units. I went to be around 12:30 and it had actually risen a bit more, up to 229 so I took another 3 units of insulin. My Pod alarmed about 2.5 units in and it took me about 20 minutes to actually get another working pod on. At this point my blood glucose was up to 266! and I took another 3 units. I did end up going slightly low that night but it wasn’t to bad and I didn’t need to correct with glucose.
The next day my sugars were on the low side when I woke up so I ate a banana on the way to work. At 11:55 I took my .6mgs of Victoza and my normal lunch bolus for a bowl of chicken and rice soup and a stick of string cheese. By 3pm I was low again! I ate a little for correction and was fine. At 5:15pm I had some chinese chicken and broccoli, some pork fried rice, and a small wanton soup for dinner (this was half of a lunch special). I bolused for 60g of carbs and ended up going low by 7:00pm. I ate a packet of fruit snacks and ran to a meeting. A half hour later I ate 2 small twizlers, and 3 snack size chocolate bars since I still felt low. By 9pm my blood sugar was up to about 120. By 10:30 I was at 170 and took a correction bolus. My blood sugar kept climbing overnight and was up to 315 when I woke at 4:30. I took another correction and it started to slowly come down. I took one final correction bolus at 7:15am as my sugars were still just over 200.
I do find about 1 week out of the month my sugars rise unexpectedly and quickly at night. I expect that’s what I ran into yesterday. I’ll wait until it happens again tonight before switching over to my high night basal program but the trend above has nothing to do with the Victoza and is probably just my normal hormone cycle. I would ALWAYS rather be 300 than 30.
This morning I went on a field trip with the 6th grade class at the church. Field trip days have traditionally been “free days” when I don’t worry to much about what I’m eating. As such I started the day with a pumpkin spice doughnut. I then got into a school bus for an hour ride. This was a mistake. I think the Victoza made my stomach not happy about the greasy / fatty doughnut but I did not feel well during the trip or for about 2 hours after I ate the doughnut.
By lunch time my stomach was settling and since I was on the early lunch shift I actually ended up administering my Victoza a little early (11:30am). This was fine but I did find that I was not able to finish my 6" Italian Sub and individual bag of chips. I ate most of the sub (through away some bread) about about 1/3 of the bag of chips. I also only drank about 1/2 of my diet soda at lunch. Usually I would be able to finish this lunch without a problem so I’m attributing my lack of hunger to the Victoza.
I ended up giving myself a slightly larger than usual bolus at lunch time as yet another of my Pod’s failed (they are replacing the whole box after this string of mishaps and have a note made so they may replace the whole shipment if I continue to have trouble!). It failed after delivering about 1.5 units of insulin out of the 9 it was supposed to deliver. I then supplemented this with about 9 more units in a shot. I did not put on another pod at this time.
Right now, 4:00, My sugars are at 96 and I still have not put on another pod. My Apidra shot was at about 12:00 so I expect my sugars to start rising soon. I have a karate class tonight so I will probably just keep giving myself shots until after Karate. Then I’ll put on another pod.
For those who are reading my last two posts and thinking that Insulet’s Omnipod is a terrible system I want to assure you that in my 3 years with them I’ve never had a whole box go bad like this before. Usually I only have to report 4-7 pods a year, about one every other month. I love my Omnipod and would not use another pump. It’s been a tough stretch but I don’t think the failures have caused too many blood sugar issues. The biggest issue is that I’ve now stabbed everyone one of my rotation spots in the last 5 days! I will continue to use my Omnipod and the customer support has been both compassionate and helpful as I’ve reported the problems.