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Can't make sense of this

ChrisM28

ChrisM28

Well-Known Member
Messages
61
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Having a very weird day. Woke on 3.3 took a dextrose tab then 20 mins later a 42 carb breakfast wholemeal bread, eggs, tomatoes waited 20 mins before taking 10 units using 1:3.5 12units - 2 for the low. At 9.30 4.5mm took 3 dex as reasoned the insulin was still working. At 12.30 3.00 took 3 dextrose. At 1 lunch of bread and sardines 55C @ 1:6 9 units. At 2.20 reading of 13.8 (gets complicated here as I'm not the diabetic but his wife and I was at work) David got muddled and injected 3 units because he was high not taking into account IOB. At 5pm reading of 13.4, I was home by this time and thought what the hell???? Did a control test on the meter fine in the middle of the range. At 5.07 reading of 11.3. What the hell is happening? He feels fine, no temperature. Please advise me what to do.

BTW the Insulin to carb ratios look off the wall but over the last week he's been testing a lot and they are the ratios that seemed to be working.
 
All the dextrose to treat the hypos and the body's counter regulatory response to the hypos - stress increasing adrenaline and increasing insulin resistance - have kicked in and made him go high. Be cautious about correcting the high, having been hypo a lot this morning he's going to be more vulnerable to hypos now and this will just start off the cycle again.
 
Thanks that's helpful. What about the two readings at the end? 7 mins apart and a 2.1mmol drop?
 
ChrisM28 said:
Thanks that's helpful. What about the two readings at the end? 7 mins apart and a 2.1mmol drop?
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If I do two readings 7 minutes apart there's likely to be a difference between them. In fact if I have one drop of blood and test it with two sticks that will give me two different readings. I wouldn't get overly concerned about that. Blood sugar monitors are allowed to be a 20% off so if your actual blood sugar was somewhere in the middle between 13.4 and 11.1 that might explain it. Or it could just have dropped a bit, he would still have active insulin in from 3 hours previous.
 
catapillar said:
If I do two readings 7 minutes apart there's likely to be a difference between them. In fact if I have one drop of blood and test it with two sticks that will give me two different readings. I wouldn't get overly concerned about that. Blood sugar monitors are allowed to be a 20% off so if your actual blood sugar was somewhere in the middle between 13.4 and 11.1 that might explain it. Or it could just have dropped a bit, he would still have active insulin in from 3 hours previous.
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Thank you very much, very clear, I think I'm wanting everything to be a bit more exact - obviously not going to happen. It was down to 8 by 7pm. He's had his dinner with no adjustment, just the bolus. Let's just hope for a better day tomorrow and thanks again for the help, much appreciated. I think it's hard to be objective when you're so close to it. He's also stopped showing any signs of a hypo which has never happened before and scares me to death. Would you think his body will have recovered from the hypos in the morning?
 
ChrisM28 said:
I think I'm wanting everything to be a bit more exact
Click to expand...
I think that's perhaps part of the issue with the way monitors and carb counts work. Having a decimal place in a mmol/l bg test makes it look like there is accuracy and calculating carbs to the 0.1 of a gram suggests that carb counts are accurate too. Neither is really. There's a lot more margin for error in the dataset than we (as humans who like order and accuracy) like to view, which can make living with T1 harder!
 
It is hard, but the support on here is a great help, thanks
 
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