Why does my wife feel very very tired when she has high readings of 14 to 17
I feel it's worth adding some context to all this.I don’t know your personal circumstances but 14 - 20 would worry the heck out of me. That’s flirting with DKA territory.
This may be considered to be controversial and I’m talking about my own experience, so please take it as what it is and not as gospel.
When I was having issues getting my numbers under control, I trusted my doc implicitly and they switched me onto some new pills that would “fix things”.
I DKAd within 2 weeks.
After a scary week in hospital, an apology from the doc (when they do that you know they screwed up), and moving to insulin. I basically decided to take control of my own health. I will listen to them but I decide what my body needs and what I should do to keep healthy. I’m polite and I do listen (in fact I’m working with them now to try a new regime that is pills only), but I have the final say.
Since I started doing that, my numbers are in the 5s and I’ve lost over 10st in weight.
Like I said, I’m not saying sticking two fingers up at your medical professionals, but become more engaged and be your own advocate.
I proposed upping daily dose from 16 to 18 but nurses do not agree
I feel it's worth adding some context to all this.
Graham's posted a few times in the Type 1 forum, so I'm pretty sure his wife's Type 1 and not Type 2. The advice he has been given is consistent with what inexperienced Type 1's are given, without going on a massive tangent, let's just say there's good reason for this and it certainly won't be the health team's intention to keep his wife's levels that high forever.
As DKA is quite uncommon amongst Type 2's it suggests that your situation is highly unusual, which does make it debatable how much your situation applies to Graham's wife.
I'm only throwing this out there, as Graham might not be aware of any of this context.
*edited due to typo.
Normally you only increase the basal dose if the morning level is higher than the evening one. The last thing you want is for her to get hypos at night.
Unfortunately it will take time to get the doses right and I suspect that the nurses are very unwilling to let your wife go hypo because of her age. A hypo induced fall for instance could put her in hospital if she broke a bone. High readings are damaging in the long term. (With the proviso that she doesn't get a DKA, but I assume you have testing strips for ketones.)
Please don't give up, things will get better, but you need to be careful to increase the doses gradually. (Disclaimer, that is not a medical instruction, just trying to explain why I think your team are being slow to change up the doses).
Also may do a low carb diet to stop putting on weight (type 1)