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when pumps go bad

AmandaD

Well-Known Member
Messages
109
Location
IRELAND
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Pump
got up this morning with a blood sugar of 14.5 had been 19.1 at 5am so corrected via pump wizard, 14.5 on waking less than an hour later pump alarms that its going into low suspend, check blood sugar and I'm actually 1.9 (sensor was reading 3.4) went to get something to get sugar up, fell, bashed and bloodied knee and had to sit on the ground until it came up. I love my pump but by god when it gets it wrong it realllly gets it wrong.....
 

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I hope you're ok now @AmandaD That sounds a scary hypo.

What went wrong with your pump? Do you know what caused this?
 
The scary thing is I have no idea why my correction caused the low.. its my usual correction factor and nothing has changed scared the living daylights out of me last time I was that low was almost 7 years ago when I was breastfeeding. Have downloaded my pump data and adjusted my basals as judging from the graphs I spent a lot of time low a day didn't realise how much until I saw it on the graphs guess that ole insulin resistance have finally been knocked on the head. The scariest part is I'd just gotten out of the car was 14.5 getting in and that low getting out not even an hr later.
 
@AmandaD Had you bolused for breakfast? Did you double check the 19 you got at 5am? I always do a second finger prick test if I get a high like that before I correct as I want to be 100% sure!

And did you shower or bath between the correction dose and the hypo? That can have a massive effect on insulin absorption.
 
I didn't eat breakfast I eat when I get to work and usually I'm higher when I get in from good old liver dump, double checked it using other hand, no shower, just happened completely out of the blue
 
Scary experience @AmandaD

What time had lapsed between your 5am correction and your correction on waking? Just wondering if the 5am insulin was still active and hadn't yet peaked when you got the bg reading of 14.5mmol/l

Hope you knee heals soon, take care.
 
bout two hrs the sensor graph actually shows a rise after the 14.5 then nearly a straight line plummet straight to bashed knee....
 
Very strange, lets just hope it's a one-off episode @AmandaD
 
AmandaD said:
bout two hrs the sensor graph actually shows a rise after the 14.5 then nearly a straight line plummet straight to bashed knee....
Click to expand...

Well, at least you've ruled out a bolus or shower effect. I know it sounds silly, but I find trying to think about lows logically helps.

I find that corrections whn I'm above 12 approx take longer to work. For me, it can take approaching 3 hours for my BS to start moving downwards. Usually I get to 3 hours and see a small shift downwards, then about 30mins later a big drop.
 
Hi Amanda

hope yr knee bash doesn't produce too much of a nasty bruise.

I've had some bad lows myself esp with lantus so was glad to change to Levemir.

Not sure how the 640G works but on the Vibe, it's possible to deduct the IOB from any correction bolus that may lead to insulin stacking and causing a massive drop. I sometimes do this but usually its when the same sort of pattern occurs the day before and then I start to realise that my basal isn't quite right anymore so try to remember to adjust it.
 
yeah the 640g does deduct IOB and works out correction amount. Hoping ti was just a once off and the basal adjustments kick in just scary cos it was so severe and so unexpected thou I really should know after 30 years that diabetes never behaves how we think it should lol
 
@AmandaD

Pumps should work out the correct bolus with IOB but sometimes they just don't.
At 11am my bg level was 5.7mmol and the IOB was 0.57u. I wanted to use the IOB up otherwise the IOB would send me low but the Vibe still told me that I needed to do a bolus of 0.5u to eat 5g carb but yesterday I did this and found myself going low before lunch so today I just didn't do the bolus and eat the 5g snack. Bg atm is ok.
I now realise that I've probably got to adjust my morning basal down a touch so that my bg is a bit higher mid morning
 
@iHs If you use the Bolus Wizard on the 640G, when you enter the blood glucose level, the pump modifies the calculated dose by any residual insulin you have on board.

When you bolus for carbs, it adjusts the bolus dependent on the bg you enter and the range you have set up If you are above the range it will add a correction less the IOB. If you are below the range, it will reduce the bolus by a portion of the IOB.

So for example, if you had a range set of 5-6, and you had 0.55 IOB and a glucose level of <4.5 it creates a -ve value for IOB and adds this to the carb bolus, so if you were to eat the 5g, you'd get no carb bolus. It's very good in that respect.
 
If bg levels are slightly below target 2hrs after a bolus, then the Vibe will ignore any IOB and just bolus for the amount of carb to be eaten. If bg levels are very below target, then the Vibe will deduct a percentage of the bolus for the carb and also deduct the IOB and not issue anything, so in that respect the Vibe and the medtronic are probably using the same calculation method. There is an awful lot of trial and error involved with it all so we all have to make mistakes first and then learn afterwards
 
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