Thanks @kmichel for the resources—I’m going to look into them! These look potentially really useful.
I don’t know about Afrezza specifically, but I’ve definitely had insurance refuse to cover things if it seems like whatever they want to pay for is doing the trick well enough. On the flip side, they also want to see evidence of improvement to keep paying for something—if my CGM hadn’t brought improvements to my A1c, they might refuse to keep covering it, which is why they require new A1cs before they will authorize each reorder of transmitters. Can’t wait to switch to a better option (this is a private plan and a PPO, but one that’s known for being difficult).
This is why I don’t expect I’d use Afrezza for every correction, because I find fast drops feel like lows for me as well. I’d have to be doing something where that wouldn’t be disruptive for me.
Guess I’m lucky… my insurance knows absolutely nothing about me except the cpt codes that get billed and the rx’s filled. They’ve never seen an a1c or a chart note or any of that…
Really sorry the first day is so hard! All of our regimen changes have been tough, and working through it is always a slog! But many of them pan out in the end
Would you know if they had? I bet they have all sorts of medical info on you. You sign away your right to deny their access to it generally when you get treatment and they pay for it. I only know about this issue in particular because they want A1cs and chart notes more often than I’d otherwise get them, so it’s always holding up my Dexcom transmitter reorders. I find that out from Dexcom though when they can’t fill the order and my endo hasn’t responded to their requests (for non existant paperwork)—if it all just went through, I would never have heard about it.
I guess I dont know for sure, but them wanting more info has never been a problem for anything. The only thing they’ve ever asked for is accident forms to be filmed out when anyone in the family has been treated for specific injuries…
Yeah I’m sure your insurance has gotten all sorts of info on you. It’s just that they’ve gotten whatever they wanted and accepted whatever they got as sufficient.
As long as I’m correcting for a true high or eating, I seem to be able to estimate my doses pretty well. That’s just over the last 36 hours, so we’ll see if that continues. I wish that they had one size smaller though because I can’t correct for a high unless my blood sugar is over 160 because I’ll drop too low.
keep it in perspective too… you’re comparing your results with liquid insulin that young have decades of experience with, you’re just starting to experiment with this stuff… and already you’re seeing pretty decent results? If the tables were turned and you’d only ever taken 3 or 4 doses of liquid bolus would you be achieving the kind of results afrezza gives you?
I’ve been making quite heavy use of my 2-u cartridges recently. They’re especially handy around exercise. Normally a 4 will get me down from 270 to my target but when I’m bicycling, a 2-u can even be to much.
For those of you considering trying Afrezza, I wanted to mention some pretty awesome benefits I’m experiencing. My Dexcom Clarity report now shows that I spend 0% (which I think really means <1%) of the time in the urgent low range. Before, this was generally 2%, but sometimes 1% or 3%. This last week, my time spent in the high range has been 8% lower than in the past as well.
I wanted to post an update because I had originally reported such negative results. I think it just takes time to figure out how things work. I’m still working through the kinks, but there are some huge benefits to this insulin.
