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Days of high readings before set change??

K

Kazzabon

Well-Known Member
Messages
46
Firstly, apologises if I ramble - I am in a 'hate this pump why did I change after 25 years' phase.

Since coming out of hospital I have had lots of lows but have been lowering the basals bit by bit and testing lots (and lots). This all made sense as I am moving more and eating differently and I understood the logic behind it and could see the theory working.

However - For the past 2 days I have been running at between 10 - 14mmol (I try to keep to 6-8ish) without reason unless it's that this week I was told I need to use the double length tubing (110cm) I was given at start up, 1 box of each was in the initial pack to see which length is prefered. It has been warm here but I havent exposed either pump or tubing to direct sunlight but both have got warm under clothing. This morning I changed the set and insulin using a 60cm tube and within 2 hours I was low to normal as the begining of the week??? Any theories/ideas peeps?? I change sets every 3 days.
 
Hi

Sorry to hear that you are running low and then high's. I for one also know how extremely frustrating this is...

If I have unexplained high's the first thing I do is to change the set BEFORE I do a correction bolus.
I write down everything reagrding high's regards what I have ate, when I have changed medication..even where I have put the sets in my body....

If my levels go high, and I know it isn't down to me then I also do a reprime with a large amount of banging the pump to get the bubbles out. I know well and truly nowadays when my high's are down to me or the pump.

For example I went high during the night and woke up to levels of 14 this morning. When I looked at my rapid d set, all around the top sticky white stuff is was blood. THerefor my high was down to the set. This is the 2nd time I have had this with the rapid d sets, that they do not hurt but I have high levels and find blood leaking around the top of the rigid set bit. I don't know why this is, and I personally find it very, very frustrating. And yes, I do reflect that at least on MDI I knew the insulin was definitely in me, rather than waking up to high levels and finding the set has problems.

I find if I have high levels which aren't down to me, the best thing to do is a good bang of the pump and prime out any bubbles that may have accumulated in the lueur connector, and to definitely change the set.

I also write down the batch numbers of new boxes of sets and tubes, as I complained to my DSN about the flexilink plus's causing me problems and to Roche, and 4 months later they were recalled.
I still don't 100% trust the equipment to be quite honest, as I am yet to have a high that has been down to me!!!!
 
It may just be that you need to change the sets more often....I can only go about 30 hours with mine....
 
Hi Kazzabon,

Like you, I was put on the Animas 2020 on the 15th March and bloods have been good except that during the last week, I waited for the 4th day to change the Infusion set as Nestle Rep was coming to see me change the resevoir and infusion set! On that morning my bloods was 14.6 mml and after breakfast was still at 12.5 mml. After changing the set, everything went back to normal! :D

So I change every 3 days for certain!
What infusion set are you using? My using the Orbit 90, the one that spins!

Since we're both using the same pump etc, since the same period of time, maybe we can see if there's any differences in what we're doing that could explain your readings?


Richard
 
Hi Richard

That would be good - I feel like I'm floundering somewhat - somedays it's fine but then it throws me a googly like this morning when I woke with a reading of 17.0!!! This may be a rebound reading so I'll set my alarm to 3am for a couple of nights to see what's happening. I was happy with my night basals for a while as I was going to bed and waking at a similar level. Yesterday I had 4 hypos which adds to my lose of confidence too.

It may be that I am one of those people who need to change every 2 days but I need to stop stressing about it and just take the readings, adjust where I think and wait to see what the specialist thinks. it's not as if I was a well adjusted diabetic BP and my levels have done a nose dive since hook-up!!

I'm not in love with it thou and when I read how people love their pumps and would never return to their pens, I think I'm a woose but when I look at it hanging on me I think it's defining me rather than being a tool for freedom. :(
 
Kazzabon said:
I'm not in love with it thou and when I read how people love their pumps and would never return to their pens, I think I'm a woose but when I look at it hanging on me I think it's defining me rather than being a tool for freedom. :(
Click to expand...


Hi

Although people say that they love their pumps and wouldn't want to go back to pens, this is mainly because of the repeated injections involved with MDI. Using a pump means only doing an injection once every 2 or 3 days (inserting an introducer) so you can see why so many people love pumps. There is more to them than that though as they will make hypos a bit easier to manage and exercise, although no one really gets their life back. I am still as diabetic as I was years ago - the only difference for me is that I am able to manipulate the basal insulin but even I find at times I need to alter my basal rates and my carb ratio. Nothing stays the same. If I wasn't able to test my bg levels like I do, the pump would be put in a drawer as I would see its use as being too dangerous. A pump if nothing else does make you take notice a lot more.

I think it can take a good 6 months or longer to get to grips with using a pump and its features so don't worry too much yet that your bg levels might not be as you expected. Chill :)
 
Hi Kazzabon,

Sorry to hear about the 4 hypo's yesterday! There's nothing worse than them!
Do you mind me asking what time etc did they happen and if you could figure out why? Did you turn pump off when you had the hypo?

The pump is just something different to get used to, just like the injections when you started
With time you'll be flying with it, you just need to adjust it to suit your lifestyle!
I know its easy to say but don't get too stressed about it and go with the flow with it!

Maybe start changing the infusion sets every 2 days for a week to two, and see if there's any change? 2 weeks of things going well will increase your confidence again!
Don't forget, all of us have bad days where nothing goes wrong!

Keep in touch and let us know how things are going?

Talk soon

Richard
 
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