Sage advice.
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Look for physical signs as well. My son’s hands were his dead giveaway. If Dex said low, but son is walking and talking fine, I asked to see his hands, if he was shaking like a leaf, then we treated. If not, we waited.
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Lots of
Great advice. I’m still MDI and I find that sometimes insulin resistance is involved because of what we’re eating. Too much unhealthy fat slows insulin efficiency. Mastering diabetes has a great book on this.
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One of the things I’ve noted over the last couple of months is the sometimes counter-intuitive nature of taking insulin. For example, I’m borderline low but it’s time to eat, we’ve made a relatively high carb meal, so I’m taking a larger bolus than “normal” in the face of possibly going lower if it isn’t timed well/correctly. Alternately, same situation but we planned a low carb meal, take the bolus indicated (despite the small size) or let it ride and if I zoom up, treat the higher than wanted BG. Non-T1 associated people, and sometimes even those that are somewhat aware, just don’t get the mental math gymnastics.
@Chris I like the hand shaking story, I do similarly: G6 says I’m low, but I do the double check of am I sweaty, shaky, mental acuity seemingly normal. I’ve found myself telling my wife I can feel the food/tabs/whatever kicking in and I’m fine, though her following app shows I’m still going down. The lag becomes very noticable.
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Yes, the waiting! I usually treat a low with 1 Smartie (6 carbs) and try to wait 10-15 min before adding any more carbs. Sometimes I’ll even use 1/2 Smartie, depending on how low and how fast the drop.
I also look at treating with 1/2 Smartie at higher levels (like 80) depending on things like whether it’s early am (then I treat because it’s only going to go lower), or if I just ate then I try to just wait it out (cause it’s going to go up).
Sometimes nothing works the way you thought it would. 
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Oh, and wash the fingers you’re going to stick! I have seen highs on the glucometer and then washed my fingers and the high magically drops. Dirty fingers (food?) can account for 250’s to 80’s, I’ve had it happen!
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When I’m seriously crashing and I know I’m going to overtreat and so I’m giving an injection and my husband says “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
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I can soo relate!!
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I’ve been there , been done by that too.
With my wife, I’ve tried to tell her that sometimes what I have to do to make this work is outside of her knowledge base. She tells me that I should tell her to “Go practice yoga until she understands.” and t6hat will give me time to fix things.
I don’t know that this will help anyone, but after a long couple of talks about how and why I do what I do will just not make sense to her. She will always be convinced that it’s just the low blood sugar that is making me temporarily stupid (which I do get) but when I get into survival mode, nothing stops me until I feel better.
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My son gives insulin anytime he treats a low with 15 or more carbs. Otherwise, he shoots to the moon on recovery. No explanation needed. Experience and experimentation reveal all, unfortunately each person is different, so the recipe has to be modified.
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Same for me.
I assume liver glycogen release is contributing to the bg rise.
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We haven’t really been able to figure out why my son is so carb sensitive, but damn he is regardless of his carb intake. At college he can’t eat low carb, so his roller coaster rides are pretty insane. Rage Bolus for the Cure!
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Been awhile since college, but I remember those meals. The dining hall was named Grace, but we called it greasies.
And I was using single Lente injection per day, no carb counting. We have come a long way!!!
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