Author: gary.keith

The last two days, every time I inject I wind up hitting a blood gusher! This is happening both in my outer thigh for basals and in my tummy for boluses. Normally I don’t bleed at all. Have any of you had days when you bleed even though normally you don’t? If so have you noticed any kind of pattern or something else to clue you in to why it’s happening? Thanks.

I forgot to take a new NovoLog pen out of the refrigerator last night and now I’m facing the prospect of having to shoot cold insulin before breakfast. Apart from the discomfort factor are there any dangers in using cold insulin?

So I was at CVS today and my regular pharmacist told me I can get a OneTouch UltraMini for free if I buy 100 test strips for an insanely high price of $112. It wasn’t that great a deal, but I’ve been wanting to try the UltraMini so I went for it.

I didn’t realize it must be coded whenever starting a new vial. So that’s a major pain.

Next, it took 8 strips and punctures before I got the meter to draw in enough blood to test with. It needs an absurdly large amount of blood!

The result was 197 mg/dl. I’ve never seen numbers that high except for in hospital right after dx. So I retested with my FreeStyle Lite and it told me 148; I’ve been running high all week and so I’ve been tweaking my basal and tinkering with my I:C. Anyway, that’s a huge difference! And so now I have no idea which is the right number. And I can’t even test the OneTouch because I didn’t realize they don’t include control solution. That’s a separate purchase! Now I need to visit the endo and see if my FreeStyle Lite is as accurate as I thought it was.

So um, that was a nice waste of a hundred bucks or so. And a confidence destroyer too because I trusted my FreeStyle Lite was giving me accurate numbers. It might be, but the point is I’m no longer certain.

Can I use my FreeStyle Lite control solution in other meters like the OneTouch, or is it proprietary?

Hey gang. The last few days my BG has been out of control. My diet is unchanged, averaging around 50g carbs per meal. My BG is continually above 130! No amount of bolus corrections can bring it under control (*). My DP phenomenon is also back big time. It had gone away when I started splitting my Lantus into 30u/25u doses at 11 (or so) pm and am.

I’m thinking a basal increase is needed, but I’m not sure. Are there other things you all have found that increases BG and IR?

(*) I haven’t made any changes to my bolus correction calculations. My target is still 90 mg/dl and I’m still taking 1u NovoLog for every 15 mg/dl above my target. I’m not doing this any more than 3-4 hours apart so that IoB winds up making me hypo. Although I did have a hypo Friday night. Felt my usual hypo symptoms, tested and sure enough 54 mg/dl. Sucked some glucose gel and was back to normal range in about an hour, although I still felt crappy the rest of the evening.

And now that I’ve just typed that last part I’m wondering if 15g of carbs via glucose gel could be responsible for all this wackiness all these days later. I don’t have a lot of experience with the gel.

Any thoughts would be most appreciated. I’ll be back in a few hours.