Living by the numbers

I have changed my diabetic basal rates, bolus ratios and correction numbers as of yesterday. As a reminder, the basal rates I take are the insulin I need for just walking around. The extra insulin I take to counteract food is a bolus. And if my blood sugar is too high, I need to know how much my blood sugar will lower for each unit of insulin I take. All these settings are stored in my insulin pump but I have to set them up in the first place. I also have to tell them all to my doctors with each visit (which most of the time involves my stammering and looking them up in the pump, particularly now as they change over time).

Since this little guy in my belly has been making my blood sugars crazy for about a week, I had enough data to try to fix them. I've changed my basal from 1 unit of insulin per hour to 1.3 units of insulin per hour. I changed my bolus ratio from one unit for every 13 grams to one unit for every 10 grams of carbohydrates. And I changed my correction settings to give one unit for each 40mg/dL I want my sugar to drop down from 50. It's a lot of changes and I'm a bit tentative I may have overdone it. But those numbers were conservative considering how many corrections I was having to take all day.

So far my sugars have been much better today. It's barely crested 150 all day and only a smidge low after a huge dinner. It was a little creepy, though, to dial up what seemed like a huge amount of insulin compared to yesterday. Sometimes I have a hard time trusting the technology.

This afternoon, my sensor alarmed in a meeting, telling me I was at 204 and climbing. I checked my blood and it said I was only 130. Hmm. I calibrated the sensor and went about my business. An hour later, I felt a little fuzzy headed and the sensor said my sugar was 120 and dropping. Figuring it was off earlier, I wondered if I was low. I checked my blood at it was 183. Hunh?! I checked immediately again (using blood from the same finger and needle prick) and it said 153. Oh for Pete's sake!

I just put the meter away and told the sensor to shut up and trusted how I felt. And today, I feel pretty okay.