YOU DO NOT DESERVE to be called a dummy! You spend way more time and mental energy than most of us attempting to figure out an incredibly difficult problem in detail. You do not allow yourself to give up when the ■■■■ gets tough. I will definitely not call you a dummy ever. And you shouldn’t call yourself a dummy either! You should call yourself a swimming champ!
And I’m going to give you a little bit more of a hard time ;-), because I think you should be willing to share the bad numbers. You don’t have to, but you shouldn’t be embarrassed about them. These things happen, tomorrow’s a new day, and you will try again.
I really like the quote that I once heard “success is the ability to move from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm.” It’s attributed to Winston Churchill, but I have also read that he didn’t say it first. I think that you are successful because you continue to try even after bad days.
thanks for that. all of it. today is not a swimming day as i have an obligation that i cannot get out of. i will be swimming 4 days next week, though.
i had a weird night, though: i went to bed with a BG of 71 and woke up in the middle of the night at 228. it took about 3 hours to get my BG back in target range. i have no idea why it happened.
all back to normal now, though. getting ready to eat some lunch.
so far, these changes, however minor, are helping. i hope they continue to do so.
WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY: (TravelingOn requested this):
did all my prep work for yesterdays swim. woke up, BGs perfect (87) ate breakfast, but afterwards, my BG began climbing and then then just continued to climb. despite giving myself a small basal, they still continued to climb. so, i decided to leave for the pool 1/2 hour early, with the thinking that at least the exercise would lower my BG.
when i got to the pool, my BG was 232 (oy vay)
1:30 BG 232
2pm BG 199
2:30 BG 156
3pm BG 136
3:30 BG 122
a nice 2 hour hard swim. the rest of the day and my evening went well. all was restored to normal. have no clue why it happened. did what i do every other day of the week, without ever having this happen. i changed my pump site out at first, then i changed it again and used fresh insulin. maybe that was a bit neurotic of me, but after doing that, all became right. so, hummm.
no swimming today, but i will be back in the pool next week on monday, tuesday, thursday and friday.
signing off, DM
DM,
Here is the idea I was thinking about. I think I mentioned this to you before.
You have to wait a long time to get rid of your IOB before swimming. Like 2-3 hours. I know this is a pain. And even after waiting all that time, you still drop a bit.
Here is my idea…
I know you are a big fan of the IM shot. Works much faster, right? Lots of people use IM because it works faster. But something many people don’t think about is that the other great thing about IM is that it also leaves faster. Faster in and faster out.
So if you do an IM shot in the morning for breakfast, I think your IOB will disappear faster.
What do you think about trying next week (the whole week to get it ironed out)?
Start with an IC of 1:7 (just to start with), and see how that works. Adjust as needed. Pre-bolus length would depend on your BG number in the morning.
Maybe swim after 2.5 hours of disconnect to start with the first time and see how that works. Maybe IM would let you move to 2 hours and reduce the IOB for you to lessen that initial drop. Just try it next week and see how it works.
You can adjust the length of your zero basal time a little bit after you have tried it to see if there is a time that fits with the flat period. Maybe it moves the flat period closer to the start, instead of the middle of your swim.
IM shots are just like the pump, except faster in and faster out. You’d probably have less IOB remaining when you swim, which potentially means less drop during that time. So that is the idea behind it.
i dont want to sound idiotic and behind the times, but i do not know how to measure the insulin i need (based upon IC and BG levels) with a syringe. back before i ever used the pump, the only IC that i knew was 1:10 and had a sliding scale for how much insulin to take for each gram of carbs. (if your BG was between 100 - 120 and you want to eat 30 gms of carbs, take X amount of insulin, etc)
i havent a clue as to how to turn that pitiful calculation into the ones i do with my pump. i know that you, personally, believe that the pump doesnt know one carb from the next, that i should be able to negotiate my insulin needs, but the truth is i do not know how to tell the pump the intricacies of what i need in order to remain in a target range. i dont know how to measure my insulin needs into a syringe. i’ve never learned.
Why not do the same as you do now, enter everything into the pump calculator - your BG, carbs, and everything. Unplug the infusion and bolus what it tells you, and then inject the same amount as IM. That way the pump will have a record of it for you.
The only difference is that you will need less time before your meal, you can do it closer to when you eat. And the insulin will go away faster. It may help you with some of your swimming drop if you have less insulin floating around your body.
i like this idea very much. i will still have to think about it before trying it. as always, whenever i am up for trying something new, i become a bit nervous/uncomfortable, and i have to let it roll around in my head for a while before i go ahead and try it.
but i am very impressed that you remember that trick of mine wherein i do the injection and then detach from my pump and program that insulin in it so that my pump will show me whats on board. very very impressed.
i shared that trick on a post about 6 months ago (maybe more). i dont know if anyone saw it, but it certainly makes life much easier when taking a shot if you are on a pump.
ironically, i just took an IM shot to bring down a BG of 160. my BGs have been really wonky lately. i see my new endo on tuesday the 3rd. hopefully when he downloads my meter, he will find a pattern that i have missed and be able to make some changes.
I do something like that for long runs so that I can eat few hours before and not have IOB. It isn’t IM, but it’s the same idea of shortening the insulin duration so it is gone before the run.
its been 1 hour since i took the IM injection and my BG is down from 160 to 119. i want to eat lunch in about 1/2 hour to 1 hour. when should i expect the IM IOB to be finished? how will i know when that insulin is done doing its thing?
should i expect my pump’s Wizard to subtract my IOB when i bolus for my meal? if the IM insulin is in faster and out faster, how can i rely upon my meters reading in order to bolus for meal?
Your IM IOB should be gone maybe an 1 to 1.5 hours sooner than it would be if it was a normal bolus. It just depends, that’s just a rough estimate.
You already know my answer about that, as far as anything that relies on a pump telling me how much insulin I should take.
If you registered your IM shot on the pump, it will use the normal insulin duration, which is longer than IM. So the pump will think you have more IOB than you really do. So you should bump the bolus amount up a bit from what the pump thinks.
But really, I hope one day you will join me on the Dark Side, and just do your own thing.
You already know more than your pump. You just don’t know that you know…
its been 1.5 hours since my IM shot. i went from 160, down to 136 (half hour later) then down to 119 (another half hour later) then down to 105 another 1/2 hour later. it seems that the IM shot delivery is slowing down. thats 90 minutes post bolus.i will test in another 1/2 hour and see where my BGs are.
shouldnt that IM shot have peaked by then? (2 hours post bolus)
i am still curious as to why this is NOT a pattern. it happens some days, and then it DOESNT happen on other days. i looked through all of my notes/documentations and there is no rhyme or reason, no pattern emerging, regardless if it is a swim day or not.
maybe this could be something to do with the amount of time i pre-bolus for?
Was your physical exertion exactly the same every day this week?
Did you eat the exact same meals at the exact same some every day this week?
Was your total carb intake and calorie intake exactly the same?
Was the glycemic index of the foods you have eaten exactly the same?
Was your BG exactly the same?
It will never be exactly the same, because your day-to-day existence is not ever the same. And unless you are on Rikers Island where they wake you up at the same time and feed you the same and you go out into the yard the same hour every day, your life will always be different from one day to the next.
Thanks TravelingOn ! your encouragement means so much to me. (and BTW, i am on NovoLog as well. I used to be on Humolog; cant remember the reason for the switch, but i am a happy customer)
i dont even know how i figured out my pump detachment trick. but it has been very helpful for me to know whats on board, and this lets me know close to accuracy.
thank you for reminding me AGAIN!!! why do i expect everything to be the same, well, i dont know.
anyway, i looked over several weeks of notes, and out of all those days, i only spiked 3 times. so, in reality, that is a very very small percentage of spiking. perhaps i should not fiddle with anything, just mark it up to D being a fickle disease, and that i must accept that i need to be flexible and have an arsenal of correction possibilities.
every time you and i discuss this, you always have several answers to how i can attack the inconvienience. you try and teach me, but i am rather slow to learn. i do, however, eventually, come over to the Dark Side with the Force guiding me forward.
