High blood sugar following cortisone injection

dianewilliamson27 said:

I have been using insulin pen regime for 36 years and achieved excellent control and usually know how to manage blips and use correction doses.
However, following a cortisone in my frozen shoulder 72 hours ago blood sugars are still constantly 15-20mml despite increasing correction doses before meals and 4 hourly correction dose of Fiasp overnight. Also increased basal yesterday by 50%. And walking 6 miles a day.
The good news is I am negative for ketones.
Any idea of how long this may last and how quickly the blood sugars may drop. I have never taken so much insulin. Easily more that twice my usual intake.
At least the shoulder pain is less so that's a bonus

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Hi dianewilliamson27

I have many doses of steroids both into joints and orally and I have found the raised levels last for about a week. Sometimes a bit longer. It is good that you do not have any ketones. Your Diabetes Team should be able to give some guidance

Hope things begin to improve soon

In my experience levels decreased slowly. Steroids really helped me so it was balancing the side effects against the benefits

Morning dianewilliamson27

Hope things keep improving

Thank you so much for this post!

I had a cortisone shot into my shoulder on Monday at 3pm. Overnight that night my levels were uncontrollably high (18 to 20mmol!) and no matter how much insulin I injected they didn't want to come down! I have had Type 1 for 10 years and always had excellent control and near normal Hba1c levels, so it was really scary.

My levels are still stubbornly high but by doubling my Tresiba and tripling my usual rapid insulin doses it has helped get me relatively back to normal.

I can't quite believe how much of an impact a cortisone injection can have. When I'm sick with cold / flu I never really see increased levels, so I kind of thought it might not impact me.

I did know about the possibility of increased blood sugars beforehand but the Consultant I saw shrugged it off and suggested it would only last a day or two and wouldn't be that bad. I'm 3 days in and no sign of it resolving; I really hope they start to come down again soon and that they do so gradually and not as a sudden crash! It worries me that Tresiba lasts so long, as I expect next week I might have a few days of hypos.

Sorry for the long winded post but I just wanted to share my experience in case anyone else in the same position stumbles across this thread ...

I got a cortisone injection in my shoulder last Friday at 8 am. While my blood sugar seemed OK for the first 12 hours, it went unusually high that night (above 20 mM), so much so, that I found myself injecting corrective doses of insulin every three hours through the night and the next day (my Dexcom7 high alarm kept waking me up).
It was the same the following night; and even though I had doubled my long acting insulin dose before bed, I still had to inject rapid insulin every three hours, trying to bring the blood sugar down - unsuccessfully though!
It's now 3 pm Sunday, and the blood sugar still ranges from 15 mM to above 24 mM, fluctuating due to several corrective doses of rapid acting insulin.
That's what brought me to this website. I'm trying to find out how long it will last.