Do a BG check before bolusing. I always see a turn on a BG check well before the CGM has any idea it’s happening.
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Couldn’t agree more. Or, at the very least allow us to “suspend” basal for longer periods than 2 hours. I’m finding lately that Liam is constantly heading low at night even with zero IOB so I’m having to wake up every 2 hours to “suspend” basal for an additional 2 hours. I’d like the ability to set either a 0.00 basal rate, or extend the time limit for how long the basal can be suspended.
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Yes, you can only suspend for 2 hours.
But you can do a “zero” of “Off” temp basal for 12 hours, which is the same thing as suspend, but much longer!
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Hmm, can you outline the steps to set that up? I don’t think I know how to do that. 12 hours is too long…but if necessary, I could just turn the basal back on.
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From the “Home” page, go to “Temp basal”
You can have a temp basal pre-programmed, or you can create one manually. (I have an “off” pre-programmed for 1 hour that I can just bump the time up or down, I think that is easier).
If you want to do it manually, do this:
-
Go to Temp basal
-
[enter manually]
-
It asks “Would you like to increase or decrease your basal rate?”. Choose “Decrease”
-
Scroll to 100% LESS insulin
-
Hit “Enter”, then choose your time - anywhere from 0.5 hours to 12 hours
To create a pre-programmed temp basal of zero (to save you some steps), do it like this:
- Settings
- Presets
- Temp basal presets
- [add new]
- Name
- Decrease
- Scroll to 100% LESS insulin
- Pick your time
Now that will be available from the temp basal screen. When you choose it, you can adjust the time, anywhere from 0.5 hours to 12 hours.
It will save you some steps once you have gone through the initial creation of it.
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Yes, we have a few temp-basals set, but I wasn’t aware that you could do a 100% less setting! w00t! This fixes my issue although i still agree with your initial post that a 0.00 minimum basal rate would be great sometimes (especially, for us, during the nights at this point in Liams’ life.) Last night he needed 3 sugar tablets because he continued heading down below 100 even though his basal was suspended and he had zero IOB. This was over 6 hours so I find it hard to believe it’s an effect of some residual insulin in his system from a previous bolus/basal.
(yes, we’re back to sugar tablets because he started becoming too addicted to skittles and wanted to go low so that he could have skittles…we didn’t like that because he was learning that “lows are a good thing”…so we’re back to tablets because he doesn’t obsess over those.)
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He’s got it figured out!
Lows aren’t necessarily good, but they can be a part of planned treats.
Donuts for @docslotnick, chocolate for @daisymae
I’ll take anything I can get.
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When he’s more stable we’ll go back to the yummy treats for corrections. He rides such step roller coasters right now that treating with candy or other treats is becoming unhealthy. Once his growth hormones subside and highs and lows become less frequent I’m sure re-introduce those things back. Right now we just need and want him to understand lows are bad… Not good. Candy isn’t a positive reinforcement to him if this fact right now.
In his mind right now he’s thinking… What do you mean lows are bad? I get candy!!! He doesn’t hear or understand when we discuss the negative effects of lows on his brain development. Anything we say about his health he retorts with… Yeah but…candy!
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Sure, I understand. I was being a bit facetious because of the old aphorism that diabetics can’t have candy. 
I always appreciated my parent’s philosophy that was counter to that old belief. They felt a diabetic could have anything - as long as it was accounted for properly.
But certainly it isn’t something to shoot for, always being low.
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