Hi. Thanks for the responses everyone.
My bloods have generally been out of control for 20 years. This is in effect due to an active lifestyle. Although I've never really carb counted as such my diet hasn't been that bad - partly shown through the fact that my cholesterol levels have always been spot on (with higher end HDL and lower end LDL). Often I've been baffled as to why why my blood sugar levels would fluctuate so much. Say if I had an average of 9 it would more than likely be due to 3's and 15's rather than being, 'around 9' all the time.
Anyway, during the last week I've got my Blood Sugars down to an average 6.2 (it was 11.4 for the month of March). But I've done this by injecting insulin between 10-12 times a day and testing my blood sugar the same amount of times. So much so that I've already got 'scabs' forming on my side fingers and I've actually almost ran out of test strips.
Needless to say I don't think this level of 'care' would be sustainable in any normal kind of life. I'm wondering how long I could actually keep it up for.
If you don't know how to carb count then it's no surprise that your BG is out of control. It's a fundamental process required for controlling BG - is there a reason why you don't know how to do this?
As for the 10-12 injections, I can imagine that the majority of those are correction doses? Correction doses from both incorrect amounts of bolus administered for meals (through incorrectly estimated carbs) and a lack of basal insulin; that's certainly my guess.
A pump is a tool, and is only as good as the person it's connected to. I'm not being patronising here
@SugarBuzz, but unless you are fully competent at carb counting and understand ratios, basal rates (including how and why you'd change them) then a pump would prove entirely useless to you. It would definitely mean less physical injections, but your BG control issues would still be present.
Have you ever adjusted your basal insulin dose by yourself, tested your duration of insulin action, calculated your I:C ratio, TDD, correction factor, etc?
The statistics for T1 diabetics achieving an HbA1c <53mmol/l (in Scotland) are pretty horrendous, only hovering about the 10% mark - and only slightly better in England. As far as HbA1c stats go for those on pump therapy, 10% of pumpers are still >86mmol/l and 61% of pump users are still >58mmol/l. That means that most pump users do not make their targets, in the same way that most T1D's on MDI don't either.
Further, the mean HbA1c for a pump user vs a non-pump user are 66.5mmol/l and 68.9mmol/l respectively. In my eyes, the differential between the two is simply not big enough and further reiterates my statement about the machine only being as effective as the effort and knowledge applied. There is no denying that pump therapy improves HbA1c's overall, but just not by enough in my opinion...
I'd imagine that the above statistics are largely based on the fact that a good proportion of pump users just simply don't know how to utilise the technology correctly. Nor have any idea what any of the terms in the previous paragraph mean...
I'd suggest the following literature before considering pump therapy, it will give you a good understanding and also give you the techniques required to improve your current situation on MDI. Every T1D should be reading this first book and IMO the NHS should be advising them to do so:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Thin...naging-Diabetes-Insulin-Completely/0738215147
http://www.diabetesnet.com/dmall/pumping-insulin
I'd also ask your Doctor if you could take part in a carbohydrate counting course. They have lots of different names depending on where you are in the UK. Typically, there is an introductory carb counting course that's just one day - and then a more advanced one which is around 4 days.