Help!

[Matthew1990]

At the moment the diabetic nurse has been telling me to inject 2mmol of humalog before meals.

I scored 2.8mmol earlier (hypo) injected 2 mmol of humalog then had burger in a roll, sausage in a roll, a scone and beans.

2 hours after this meal I scored 13 odd and just now 4 hours after meal I scored 17.4 (ketones).

Help and advice please

 

[noblehead]

Hi Matthew,

Hope you delayed your humalog injection and treated your hypo first with fast acting glucose, you should never ever give a insulin injection when in a state of hypoglycemia no matter what!

As for the nurse telling you to have 2 units of humalog with each meal, surely she would have told you how many carbs you should eat to match the insulin? The meal you have stated would could contain 100g of carbs or more, this would mean that 1 unit of insulin is covering 50g of carbs which is a lot of carbs even for a newly diagnosed, and as your postprandial readings have shown this amount of insulin is inadequate to cover such a carby meal.

Should my memory serve me right you are due to go on the DAFNE course in a few weeks, hopefully then they will teach you to carb count correctly and match your insulin accordingly and prevent these postprandial spikes, in the mean time have a chat with your diabetes nurse about your results.

Nigel

 

[Hazza]

Totally agree with Nigel.
My daughter is only 7 and when she was diagnosed we were told to give her 3 units of novo rapid before meals. The problem with this is that you need to match your carbs per meal to your insulin. We were told to allow 20 carbs per 1 unit of insulin, which was OK for her tea time meal but not for her breakfast so we started counting carbs to match her insulin to the amount of carbs that she was having.
Now, 6 months into it and her I:C ratios are 1:13 in the morning 1:14 at lunch time and 1:12 at dinner/tea time so you can see that you may need different ratios at different times of the day.
If Lily had had that amount of carbs (100) for a meal she would need around 7 units of insulin to cover it.
I hope that this gives you a little more insight into why you would be high at times and low at others, it is all a question of balancing carbs and insulin.
Good luck

Harry

 

[Matthew1990]

I havent been told to treat the hypo first then inject, and when you say fast acting, you mean gluco tabs? drop of lucozade? How long after then should i recheck that I am not in a hypo and inject before the meal? Also havent that fast acting wouldnt it increase my sugar levels sky high, through the roof?

 

[noblehead]

I havent been told to treat the hypo first then inject, and when you say fast acting, you mean gluco tabs? drop of lucozade? How long after then should i recheck that I am not in a hypo and inject before the meal? Also havent that fast acting wouldnt it increase my sugar levels sky high, through the roof?

Any fast-acting glucose will do, glucotabs, hypo-stop, jelly babies, lucozade or Kendal mint cake should you choose. Check your bg about 15 minutes after treating a hypo, if it is still low then treat again, for a hypo of 2.8 I would eat 3 glucotabs or jelly babies which normally is sufficient and then follow this up with a 10g snack once my bg was back to normal.

Nigel

 

[HLW]

Also havent that fast acting wouldnt it increase my sugar levels sky high, through the roof?

Depends on how much you eat.