Two weeks ago I wrote a grouchy blogpost about my frustrations with diabetes devices. Things got a little better for a while, but today THE GROUCH IS BACK!
I am sitting here with a high BG that is 99% likely the result of an infusion set change earlier today. I find that no matter what kind of set I use, I more often than not get highs after insertion. I have a grab bag of tricks that I use to avoid the rise, but none of them worked today. I finally gave up and inserted a new set.
These problems are not the fault of my pump, but they are the fault of an insulin system that makes me utterly dependent on the short-acting insulin delivered by my pump. Why should I have to accept high BG numbers for 4-6 hours every three days? I hate these “blameless” highs. I ate a small breakfast today followed by a 3-mile walk. Then I changed my infusion set and my BG climbed from the 80’s to the mid 200’s in the next couple of hours. If I’m going to have a snarky high, I should at least get to have a cupcake or a chocolate-covered donut.
My Dexcom G4 was not an innocent bystander to this mishap. In fact it was continuing its 2 month vacation from accuracy. Because I felt good and the Dex showed my BG to be level, I didn’t test after breakfast until late morning. I was surprised to see a BG of 181. It didn’t make sense so I tested again: 180. I took a correction bolus and calibrated the Dex which was off by 75 points. I was well up in the 200’s before my BG began to fall as the result of several correction boluses and the new infusion set. When my BG finally started to drop, I gave the Dex an extra 30 minutes to see if it would react. Not even close and I recalibrated it downwards. This is the third day of a sensor that has been a problem from the start.
So what am I going to do besides tear out my hair and curse everything related to diabetes?
First I’ll call Dexcom whose reps have been very helpful by replacing sensors and giving advice during the last couple of weeks. I’ve been using new hardware for the last month and the next step might be to try another new transmitter.
Secondly I am going to make changes to my insulin regimen. In a recent post titled Lantus is Lovely and Amazing, Katy of Bigfoot Child Have Diabetes revisited the idea of her son using Lantus in tandem with his pump. She saw the benefits as minimizing the effects of a pump failure/bad site and a way to give her son more flexibility for water activities and in general some pump-free time. The use of the pump along with Lantus (or Levemir) is called the Untethered Regimen and is best described by Dr. Steve Edelman in a 2004 article. I have used the untethered regimen several times on beach vacations and wrote about it in a July 2013 blogpost.
I have always thought that the untethered regimen makes a lot of sense. An infusion set insertion, a bad site, or a pump problem will have less of an effect with Lantus in the background. Because you take some of your basal with the pump, you still have the ability to reduce or increase basal rates as needed. I’ve had great success when I have used the Lantus/pump combo in the past and as I said in a comment on Katy’s post: “It works so well that I’ve often wondered if I should do it all of the time.”
So that’s what I am going to do. It’s time to experiment with changing up things because I am not happy with where I’m at. I’ve lost confidence in my ability to get good results by doing my normal “right things”. Of course the real villain here is Type 1 diabetes and there is no doubt that I am going through a bad period where minor things are affecting my blood sugar quickly and erratically.
I have ordered Lantus from the pharmacy and will start using the untethered regimen when I have the long-acting insulin in hand. Will I stay on a combined Lantus/pump regimen for the rest of time? Probably not, but I think it will make things easier in the near future. It could be that I just need an increase in basal, but I’m tired of tweaking things and overreacting to highs and lows.
One thing that I always try to remember is that my body does not know the difference between bolus and basal insulin. Formulas and rules of thumb are just that. Sometimes I need to be creative to figure out ways to deal with blood sugar excursions. Please realize that I have used the untethered regimen before so this is not me going off wildly without understanding what I am doing. I see my endocrinologist in two weeks and this will certainly give us something to talk about. She knows that I am a headstrong and self-managing patient and she has never been upset by that. In fact she always emphasizes that this is “my diabetes” and she is my coach.
The final topic for today is related to syringes. Whenever I’ve used syringes in recent years, I have pulled them from a box purchased on 11/15/04. Do you think I should buy new ones???
Disclaimer: Nothing I say here should be construed as medical advice and please do not change your insulin regimen without consulting with your medical team.
Over the weekend I was asked by fellow Minnesotan 
the Vibe is really a 6-1/2 year old pump. My understanding is that the G4 software update just released by Dexcom will not be included in the Vibe. Therefore the Vibe will be an old pump integrated with an out-of-date Dexcom receiver.
What happens if a traffic accident leaves you unable to speak? For that matter, what happens if you are a diabetic with hypoglycemia unawareness and suffer a severe low while operating a motor vehicle? I can go even further and ask what happens if you have a heart condition and suffer an incident while driving your automobile? There are many what ifs. I recently found out about a program called the Yellow Dot Program. I learned of this program when my fellow blogger Sue and her husband Steve were visiting us from New York during the summer. Somehow we got into a diabetes discussion, and the subject of this program came up because they had a Yellow Dot on the driver’s rear windshield of their car and the Yellow Dot booklet in their glove compartment. I googled my Pennsylvania State Department of Motor Vehicles and found out that Pennsylvania had the program and immediately sent away for the booklet which contains the Yellow Dot and information about using the booklet to inform police and first responders in the case of an accident.
vehicle’s rear windshield alerts police and first responders to check your glove compartment for vital information to ensure you receive the medical attention you need. While it was specifically created for traffic accidents, I have been told by my Department of Motor Vehicles that they are now adapting it to include any type of medical issue including diabetes. That wonderful yellow dot on the rear driver’s window of your vehicle will alert the police or first responders that you are not drunk…you are having a diabetes-related incident.
Test Guess and Go 