I’ve completely lost control of my sugars the last two weeks, 3 different pod sites since I started noting that and it just seems like there’s backup of insulin being processed or extreme delay or something I can’t imagine.
I usually balance out overnight and start with reasonable sugars, I took my bolus this morning (8am) an hour before eating because I wanted to see if it would have any effect before the afternoon. It didn’t and after I ate my blood sugars rose and have been high since, I took my bolus for lunch at 10:30am and saw no change before I ate at 12:30pm, made sure to eat less. It rose and has been sitting at 18 since.
I’ve been taking corrective boluses the past week when this happens trying to bring it down so I don’t lose even more to nerve damage but that has led to crashing lows in the afternoon and rest of day. I don’t think my pump delivered more than 0.4 units yesterday from 3pm-9pm and I ate 80G glucose tablets at 3:30pm and two suppers as it continued to drop during that time. It feels like half my meals these days are glucose tablets which usually take an hour to work so I start eating them when it starts dropping and it’s at around 10.0. I’ll still go <2.2 for an hour sometimes despite eating damn near a bottle of them at that point. Then in the evening like 6 hours after my last meal it’ll start to rise and in the evenings I can typically bring my sugar down so they balance out overnight.
I have no idea what to do, my endo has given up as well as my other doctors and don’t have a clue what to do either. I can’t exercise anymore where I used to hike and jog and walk but I usually do that after work when my sugar is crashing for hours and I probably should have called an ambulance the last three times I tried.
I took note of the placement of the last pod and will do so with this one as well. I have had expected results from my insulin before but hitting 3 sites on my body where absorption is wacky is the only thing I can think of to explain this. Sorry if details are lacking, I’m losing my sh*t a little bit.
If you are not in the US that link might not work so I’ll summarise by quoting from it:
Insulet is providing an update to the voluntary Medical Device Correction that was initiated on March 12, 2026 for specific lots of Omnipod® 5 Pods due to a manufacturing issue we identified through our ongoing product monitoring. Based on our investigation, this issue is isolated to identified lots distributed in the United States only.
I’m sure other humans here will comment on the issue but, based on what you said, I believe that this is an essential first step.
@samulli99, welcome to FUDiabetes! So sorry about your BGs
Beyond what @jbowler suggested—my son K is also an omnipod user. One thing we have discovered with time is that it frequently happens that a pod loses its efficiency, for whatever reason there may be—insertion canula is popping out, scar tissue, saturated site, who knows.
The point, though, is this:
any bolus more than 4.5, K uses a pen, not his pod (so that the area around the pod is not saturated with insuln)
If K gets a high, and, after 2.5-3 hours, is unable to get in control of his BG (i.e. he sees no good response when injecting large doses), he swaps his pod and tries again with pen corrections.
@Jen used to say: 4 hours on a high → change the pod
K is following this rule, but possibly with a faster action time, unless, of course, he understands the cause (pizza or some such thing).
Is this something that may explain your problem? I may not have understood it properly. The process for K is pretty routine by know.
@samulli99 one thing that everyone here does not dispute is that we are all different. I use the Omnipod and I did suffer from effects somewhat like yours before the Insulet recall. I don’t know if the 'pods that I had used in the past were the cause of my problems or something else; I no longer had the 'pod lot numbers of the used pods.
So we are each individuals and we are each different. That said here is my day, today. This graph uses US units; divide the BGs by 18 to get the mmol/L that you are using and vice versa (18 == 324):
The orange[g] are my extremely approximate estimate of the carbs I ate and the light blue[unsufficed] is the insulin in IU that I bolused (we sometimes say, “bloused”) to cover that. The bottom line, the blue graph, is my “basal”; I’m using an Artificial Insulin Delivery System (AIDS) so it adjusts my background insulin delivery to cope with errors, insofar as it can; the light blue line is 0.5IU/hour.
The vertical dashed line is the boundary between reality and the future.
My observation is that I do bolus, I do go high and my BG does behave in surprising ways where I don’t record the facts; I did consume food at 3pm because of the sticky low BG. The AIDS took a while to catch up, but then I didn’t tell it.
What you are experiencing is beyond my ken and it is serious.
I’m surprised your endo is happy; based on what you say he should be doing the headless chicken at this point.
So, yeah, something is wrong.
I do have some approaches that might work but I’m not going to suggest them because I believe you just need to sit down with your endo and ask, “How do we fix this.” The delayed adsorption of glucose tablets is something I’ve never experienced; for me they always hit after 5 minutes.
Gastroparesis could be a good thing to look into, since it sounds like you have other types of nerve damage. One of my good friends has gastroparesis and struggles with the unpredictable highs and lows. Her digestion takes about 6 hours she thinks, which makes timing insulin a struggle. If Omnipod allows extended/square boluses over the course of several hours, that might be worth a try.
If your digestion could be slowed, you could try treating lows by sucking on the glucose tabs instead of chewing. Holding a glucose gel in your mouth for several minutes is another option. It takes practice not to swallow immediately, but some of the glucose will absorb through your mouth instead of relying on the rest of the digestive tract.
Wishing you luck with your next endo visit. Not knowing what exactly has changed doesn’t mean you or they should give up!
That sounds incredibly difficult and frightening. With lows this severe and unpredictable, especially after corrective boluses, please seek urgent medical help rather than trying to manage this alone, contact your pump insulin manufacturer urgently to rule out delivery or pod issues.
@samulli99 You’ve received good suggestions above! I’d add a few things:
Consider whether you have an infection; presumably your Endo/doc did this already, perhaps yourself, but it may be good to track your temp for a while.
Consider how long its been since you tested for bolus (ICR) and basal amounts. The length of your highs mitigate against these.
Presumably you’ve already considered new meds, life style changes, food changes, and similar.
I agree if you go to 18 or 2 mmol and sat there for any period of time (hours in the cae of the higher, much less if the lower) you need to seek medical help.
I also agree with trying swapping out your pods or using a pen/syringe to apply a correction dose. If the situation you describe was short term, i’d suspect a cannula insertion issue, but it seems a longer term issue so that can be discounted and a pod lot issue is more likely (pod age? Lot #? PDM age, batteries, connectivity?)
You may want to ensure your insulin itself isn’t the issue. Perhaps it got baked in route to you? In storage at pharmacy or with yourself? (Not blaming you, just looking for possibilities!)
And don’t discount the possibility of multiple issues.
Please note none of us are docs (that I know of), we’re just going off of our experience. Please post back what, if anything, works or is figured out. It’s good to know for others that may have a similar issue (perhaps me!).
