I mistakenly injected the wrong insulin

[onnecar]

I have a sore eye and a bad leg at the moment, so struggling anyway. Also was distracted at lunch time and injected 10 units of my background insulin, instead of my fast novorapid fast-acting insulin. I normally inject 22 units of humulin in the morning, so now I have injected 32 units for today. I ate lunch but did not also inject the novorapid. Would be grateful for any advice at all. This is the first time I've made this mistake. Although once or twice in the past I have taken too much Novorapid or forgot to take it.

 

[SimonP78]

You might still need a bit of novorapid depending on what you're eating, but I'd be very sparing (and be tempted to err on the side of running high until you work out how much effect the extra insulin will have).

The biggest issue you may have is overnight as you'll likely tend to trend low and won't be awake to see it - you will probably need an uncovered bedtime snack and either set CGM alarm significantly higher than normal, and/or set an actual alarm to wake yourself up to do a blood test, and expect to need to wake up so have some options to hand.

See how you get on during the day, hopefully it'll be easy enough to control by eating with lower/no bolus cover.

I cross my fingers firmly, but haven't done this for quite some time - my MDI pens are different so it's hard to confuse them, but back when I used to mix my own short-ish and long-ish insulin (-ish because the older insulins were neither long nor short cf the insulins available today), I once took my morning dose (~45U total) instead of my evening dose (~15U total). It was a very long night eating stuff, wasn't much fun!

Please keep us up to date!

 

[onnecar]

Thanks for your answer Simon. I agree about the overnight thing. That is the most worrying side of it. I have a glucose monitor, but it's not infallible. I might do what you suggest about setting an alarm and eating huge bedtime snack. I don't sleep well anyway, so is going to be great fun and games. I will give myself lower humulin dose tomorrow probably too. Also keeping check on levels.

 

[SimonP78]

Is it Humulin I? Sorry I missed the mention of humulin and assumed, having seen mention of novorapid, that it would be one of the longer/flatter basals. My apologies!

If so, as it's peakier and shorter acting than more standard (for me as a type 1 basals), you may not have such problems overnight, but you may have more problems during the afternoon - I'd therefore try not taking any bolus at all (and see how you get on - if you do need to correct make it much smaller than normal.)

You shouldn't have any residual long acting by the morning, though it won't hurt to reduce the morning dose if you want to (the worst that will happen is you run a bit high all day) and it might also help if you end up running low during today as tomorrow will be spent (by your body) replenishing glycogen stores in the muscles and liver.

 

[onnecar]

Yes it is Humulin 1. I've noticed that my post lunch levels are in range but still higher than usual. So may have to take some novorapid at dinner.