when you say that you dont bolus enough, what do you mean by that? do you not bolus enough for corrections? or do you not bolus for meals/snacks, etc? i know this sounds like a stupid question, but i was just wondering for the sake of clarification.
have you ever done IM injections for correcting lows? this is something i have been doing lately and i LOVE it; i can get a 200+ BG come down into target range within 1 hour. and the insulin doesnt seem to linger as long (4+ hours as usual) and it seems to peak a bit earlier. but it is something i would totally recommend trying. i use my thigh.
but you use your calves, dont you? that sounds way too painful for me.
and btw, i tried exercising my thigh muscle last night post shot, and it quickened the effect. took one hour for my BG to come down from 210 to 135 and then down in the next hour to 86.
one thing i have noticed with the IM shots, is that even when i use my typical sensitivity factor (down by 50 per unit ), i go lower than i would when i use my pump to correct. it seems like my sensitivity is greater, not just faster. is this true with you as well?
It’s not a stupid question. When I discover that I forget to bolus, I tend to be overcautious and underestimate the amount of insulin needed to get my BG down before the next meal.
I’ve never done IM injections. I don’t think I’ve used my pen more than once since I started pumping. For IM injection I’d have to get other needles, because my 4 mm needles are probably too short.
4mm is deffinately too short. i use the 8mm ones and then i flex my muscle so that there is no chance i will not miss, b/c if i only get the insulin into the sub q fat, i might as well have used my pump for the delivery.
as eric always tells me (and reminds me) it is easier to bring a low BG up than to bring a high BG down (and its more fun, too, b/c then you get to munch out on the foods you would otherwise not have eaten .)
( and i don’t know whether pen needles come in the 8mm lengths or not. all of mine are tiny and short.)
just out of curiousity, what are your daily BGs like? i mean, whats your typical day’s range? what do you consider your “high” and what do you consider your “low” ? how is your A1c?
12.7mm is only 1/2 an inch. It’s really not that long for many adults.
Try this:
Tighten your thigh muscle as hard as you can. Now try to pinch it. The part that is easy to pinch in your fingers is your skin and fat layer. The hard part underneath that does not move is your muscle. This can give you an idea of how long the needle needs to be to get into the muscle. Different areas of your body need different lengths to reach muscle.
I use the 12.7mm’s when I want to make absolutely sure.
with the 8mm, i can’t miss. when i flex my thigh, there is no skin left to pinch. theres only a thin layer of skin covering the muscle…or at least that is how it appears to me. but i can deffinately feel the syringe going into the muscle as opposed to missing it. i guess the 12.7mm would just go deeper. but, for me, what would be the point?
despite my swimming, i don’t have the same amount of muscle on my biceps as i do on my thighs. but, my calves are solid muscle, as is my tummy. and my thighs seem to work perfectly. (my biceps feel muscular only if i flex them. then, they are very strong ; otherwise, not.)
My current 30-day average BG is 8.1 mmol/l (~146 mg/dl), which I think is too high, but the summer holiday period (any holiday period actually) is always hard. I consider higher than 7.9 ‘high’ and below 4 ‘low’. Of course a tighter target range would be better, but that’s not realistic since I can only measure my BG 4-5 times a day. My last A1c was somewhere between 6.5 and 7 I think. I don’t know exactly, over here they don’t use percentage anymore to measure A1c and that’s very confusing. They switched to mmol/mol (that’s not the same as mmol/l) a couple of years ago and I’m still not used to it.
Sometimes my system works well, sometimes it doesn’t.
can you buy your own strips to test with on line? thats what a bunch of us do; it really helps to keep good control. i dont have a CGM, so i test very frequently (sometimes 20 times/day) so i really go through a lot of strips. i get them from Amazon.com
Yes, that is possible. I might start doing that when I graduate and get a job. Or I could buy the Freestyle Libre. But I’m not going to spend my savings on such things now.
