Keep forgetting to do BT/Insulin

[Felly]

I've been on the pump for nearly 2 months now. I keep finding myself forgetting to do a blood test after meals. This means I have no insulin going in. I only remember when I do a test later and find I am very high.

Does this happen to anyone else?

 

[cleo82]

Hi Felly

Yup - guilty of this myself, except its doing jags for me - when I'm busy or stressed I just blank out whether or not I've done it and have to wait till sugars climb to find out.

Best solution i can find is set an alarm on your test meter (or mobile), and aim to stick to set mealtimes as much as possible. although, remembering to set the alarm is a problem....

I'm interested in hearing anyone else's suggestions.

 

[spideog]

Does your pump not have a history of any recent boluses? Have made use of that feature on mine quite a bit when I can't quite remember due to getting interrupted by the phone during lunch.

 

[Cheryl]

Does you pump suspend insulin delivery if you don't test after meals?! If so, what pump are you on? I'm about to upgrade, need to choose my new one and would hate a pump that did that!!

 

[jopar]

No there isn't a pump that suspends delivery of insulin when isn't done..

The Veo will if using the CGM part of it, will suspend the pump is BG's it's reading drops below a preset level to avoid hypo's

And all pumps have a suspend time feature on them that you can set so that if you don't press any buttons in a preselected time spam it will automatically alarm and switch off..

All pumps even the old blue spirit pump have a reminder alarm function to that can be set, but most will have a feature incorpartate in the bolus wizard that can be automaticall set to remind a selectable time spam after a meal, correction etc...

If you are high after you've bolused for your meal, it isn't because of it's stopped delievering, but because you've either miscalcualted your bolus/carbs, the raito's are out or even that your basal is incorrect..

But if you can't find a way to sort out a method of taking bg's when you need them, do proper basal testing stints to ensure basal is set correctly etc... Then a pump is a bit of a pointless and rather expensive piece of kit... As you won't improve your control using it instead of MDI..

To get the most out of a pump you've got to put the management effort in on a daily bases..

 

[Cheryl]

Thanks Jopar, I have a Spirit at the moment & my team have agreed that the basal increments just aren't small enough for me, so I get to choose a new one. I'm torn between the Veo & the new Animas Vibe, each has good features, but more importantly, each lacks something that I'd like. It's so hard trying to get all the details, such as how often one has to change the reservoir, how big the reservoir is, etc. every time I see a post which suggests someone's pump has a feature which would be a major negative for me, I panic in case I'm about to make a wrong decision!

 

[jopar]

If you've got the blue spirit pump the basal incredment is a bit naff.. The new Combo has been improved on this score and is now comparative to the other pumps..

I think what every pump you get there will always be an aspect from another pump you wished you had, My friend just got the new Animas even though it gives her an advantage in a couple of areas slightler lower increadment on the basal and being able to change basal at 30 minutes rather being restricted to the hour but she's finding that a lot more button pressing is required with it which is driving her bats a tad...

I know some people use a peroid of zero delivery when the find that the min incredment is still two much. But not wise to have more than an hour of zero delivery.. And sometimes when using this, you need a little extra when deliver restarts to level/avoid the BG getting too high..

 

[Cheryl]

I'm leaning towards the Veo at the moment. I'm a little unsure about the Vibe only having 12 basal periods in 24 hours as I currently use at least 16; though one of the reasons for changing is that I change hourly for example from 0.4 to 0.5 to 0.4 to 0.5 as it seems that I could really do with 0.45 every hour but can't set up the Spirit that way. I also have a lot of hypos & if I can really level out my fasting BGs, I hope to be able to reduce those too.

However, I know what you mean about ease of use; the Spirit is very simple to operate & anything more complex is not very desirable. I've started a comparison table to try & see which pump has which features, reservoir size, pump size, CGM capability etc & I just have to decide which has the best combination & least negatives for me. Big decision!

 

[PaulKC]

Hi cleo82,
I also used to keep forgeting if i had taken my insulin injectionand had to wait a few hours or so to re-test to see how much my levels had increased.
I found the easy way for me to remember was to actually log how much insulin i had taken after each meal in a BG book.
It is a pain having to always write the infomation down but for the few seconds it takes to write just after an injection i think it is worth it.
Since i have been doing this i have not had any levels higher then 8 mmols when i have tested my blood before my next meal.
Paul.