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Type 1'stars R Us

My lightbulb moment occurred today due to looking at my pump tubing from a different angle in the light from the ceiling bulb.
I was changing my pump cartridge and loading a new one.
The problem was that the pump was filling the tubing from the newly loaded cartridge but no drops were appearing at the needle on the insert connection at the top of the vertically held tubing.
The last time 10 units of insulin had been enough to fill the tubing. At the twenty unit mark I stopped the filling. The tubing looked all right. What to do? All connections appeared tight and there was no sign of leakage.
Then I went looking for the air which is supposed to be pushed up the tubing. It was difficult to see. Then I saw the pinkish colour of the tube right up near the top of the tube. Yep, I figured that when I had inserted the vertical needle I must have hit a blood vessel and there was some flashback of blood into the very top of the tube. (Once the needle insert is in I detach the tubing to in order to connect it to the pump cartridge and so that no insulin filling the tubing is pushed through the new needle in the skin as a bolus) !!!
Being a new pump (Tandem T-slim) I was slower at filling the cartridge and the blood must have clotted in the tubing right at the top.. The pump had been compressing the air trapped in the tubing!! And the tubing/needle insert was the same as my old pump, the Animas Vibe so it was not a matter of technique.
The first time in 6 years of pumping that I can recall the tubing being blocked in this way. So I opened a new needle insert device and 'borrowed' the tubing. Looking for a lightbulb moment? Look for the light !!!
And I proved that no pump set up is foolproof, and that if a clot like me had not found the clot, I would have ruined the Pump Help lady's evening!!
 
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Scott-C said:
The butcher across the road from me has a poster in the window as part of a campaign for public access defibrillators.

Good idea in principle, but there's also about a dozen bars in the area, so it's only a matter of time before a bunch of lads coming home from a night on the town reckon it'll be a larf to start electrocuting each other...
Click to expand...


As I understand it, Scott, should a member of the public want to grab a defib, they have to call 999 for the code to open the magic box, then they are guided if it is felt defibrillation is the appropriate course of action. If the defib were coming into play an ambulance would be dispatched asap.

Of course that doesn't assure it's possible to 100% prevent meddlesome japes, but there are processing in place.

Systems may differ in Scotland.
 
helensaramay said:
I had a light bulb moment as I trudged up the hill on the way back from Morrisons this lunchtime.

About one a month, I wake up with high BG despite going to bed with a good BG.
Sometime ago, I realised this was related to pasta and always happened when I had eaten faux carbonara with smoked mackrel - a tasty dish high in carbs and fat and very quick and easy to make after a tough day of work.
I have been experimenting with combi bolusing but been amazed by the amount of insulin I appear to need.

I am an occasional Libre user. Using it to identify trends rather than to calculate insulin doses from.
I have one on at the moment and ate smoked mackrel carbonara for my evening meal last night.
Despite the combi bolus, and going to bed on 5.6, my BG rose throughout the night.

My expectation had been for it to reach a high plateau (is that a sierra?) and stay there until I took a correction bolus.
But it kept on climbing.
I had been interpreting this as the carbs being digested over 12 hours which seemed silly.

That's when I had the light bulb moment.
I am very aware of insulin resistance when my BG gets high and, therefore, increase my bolus when going high.
But until my post-Morrison trudge, I had not thought about how it also affects basal.
So, once I reach a certain level and not awake to correct it, my basal is not enough to keep it stable.
Hence the continuous rise - after a certain time period, it has nothing to do with the carbs but more to do with the insulin resistance,

I still need to work out the insulin combi bolus dose but I don't have to spread it over such a long period.
I have more information to set that bolus dose next time ... next month

I am sure you are all clever enough to realise that insulin resistance affects basal as well as bolus.
But I would appreciate it if you didn't tell me - just let me bask in my new found knowledge.
Click to expand...
Hi @helensaramay, Enjoy your time in the limelight. :):):) What matters is that it is a victory for you.
And if your walk had been very late in the afternoon perhaps the increased insulin sensitivity and possibility for lower BSLs say 6 + hours later might have cancelled out the BSL rise and resistance. You might have not been able to prove your theory as easily.
Time is not of the essence, timing is. Please add your revelation to your CV and have a certificate done.
It is these moments that can make you feel that you have outsmarted this tricky condition, even if only once in a while.:happy::happy::happy:
 
helensaramay said:
I had a light bulb moment as I trudged up the hill on the way back from Morrisons this lunchtime.

About one a month, I wake up with high BG despite going to bed with a good BG.
Sometime ago, I realised this was related to pasta and always happened when I had eaten faux carbonara with smoked mackrel - a tasty dish high in carbs and fat and very quick and easy to make after a tough day of work.
I have been experimenting with combi bolusing but been amazed by the amount of insulin I appear to need.

I am an occasional Libre user. Using it to identify trends rather than to calculate insulin doses from.
I have one on at the moment and ate smoked mackrel carbonara for my evening meal last night.
Despite the combi bolus, and going to bed on 5.6, my BG rose throughout the night.

My expectation had been for it to reach a high plateau (is that a sierra?) and stay there until I took a correction bolus.
But it kept on climbing.
I had been interpreting this as the carbs being digested over 12 hours which seemed silly.

That's when I had the light bulb moment.
I am very aware of insulin resistance when my BG gets high and, therefore, increase my bolus when going high.
But until my post-Morrison trudge, I had not thought about how it also affects basal.
So, once I reach a certain level and not awake to correct it, my basal is not enough to keep it stable.
Hence the continuous rise - after a certain time period, it has nothing to do with the carbs but more to do with the insulin resistance,

I still need to work out the insulin combi bolus dose but I don't have to spread it over such a long period.
I have more information to set that bolus dose next time ... next month

I am sure you are all clever enough to realise that insulin resistance affects basal as well as bolus.
But I would appreciate it if you didn't tell me - just let me bask in my new found knowledge.
Click to expand...

Excellent post Helensaramay and something I had not given any thought to either. So are you saying that if we have a high carb meal maybe also high in fat, eg mine would be a beef curry with rice from Chinese which is probably around 130 grammes of carbs. I would need to split my bolus which I do and then perhaps increase my overnight basal as well?.

Typically I would have my meal around 6pm take about 60% of bolus up front and the other 40% around 9pm but I find I am still waking up at 8am still fairly high. So increase my basal by a % age and just experiment to see by how much.

The body is a bl oody complicated thing
 
DCUKMod said:
As I understand it, Scott, should a member of the public want to grab a defib, they have to call 999 for the code to open the magic box, then they are guided if it is felt defibrillation is the appropriate course of action. If the defib were coming into play an ambulance would be dispatched asap.

Of course that doesn't assure it's possible to 100% prevent meddlesome japes, but there are processing in place.

Systems may differ in Scotland.
Click to expand...
I recall a company (not sure where, or which country) was trialling a system where a defib machine would be flown out by drone to a shopping centre etc needing one urgently. Of course there were logistical problems to solve. But what havoc could a drone like that cause and what might a group of people do to it?
 
helensaramay said:
I am very aware of insulin resistance when my BG gets high and, therefore, increase my bolus when going high.
Click to expand...

I'd not really thought about it till you mentioned it a few days ago, and it does explain some things and gave me the confidence to be a little more aggressive when running high, so you can be quite smug about that :-)
 
kitedoc said:
I recall a company (not sure where, or which country) was trialling a system where a defib machine would be flown out by drone to a shopping centre etc needing one urgently. Of course there were logistical problems to solve. But what havoc could a drone like that cause and what might a group of people do to it?
Click to expand...

Our nearest town here (a real no-horse town) has several AEDs around - Two in the main shopping street, leisure centre, outside the cottage hospital, and in our village, there is one on the outside of our village shop (Co-Op).

The town has a very strong small business community that drove the initiative, thus they clubbed together to buy the devices. They also installed free wi-fi throughout the town centre, ad when the Co-Op store in town was closed, they bought the building - mainly for the car park, and kept the car park open for townspeople. (The shop has also now been let.)

None of that stops our High Street having it's fair share of charity shops and empty units from time to time, but they do some good stuff.
 
Mel dCP said:
There were three of us applying for one training position, so I guess I have a 33% chance... I’m not optimistic, I don’t think I came across as well as I usually do - I thought of all the right things to say on the way home...:oops:
Click to expand...

Fingers crossed for you Mel, and if it comes to nothing this time around, you have the experience under your belt.

The other two are probably having exactly the same thoughts as you.
 
Since the forecast is for rain all day - I decided tomorrow is catch up on all the neglected household chores, and to assist myself in staying home until they are all done, I've just washed all three of the meter bags, backpack cover and hi-vis, main in-use coat, the Japes' "meds bag" and both backpacks. They all needed it...

I don't actually own a car at the moment, but I do drive the workplace cars, one of which I was moving around in the week - and the students "supervising" me asked what I was doing before I moved it into our work area as "Don't you just have to test at lunchtime and breaks?" so they now know the mantra "Five to drive". One of them reminded me the next day when I went to move a different car!
 
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