Re: 2/20 Fred:AMPS=398 (2.50u)
Hi Kathleen and Fred!
Those 400's you are catching to my eye definitely look like bouncing.
A bounce can look like a high pre-shot number or it can be higher for a whole cycle. There's different approaches with how to handle bounces, but I'm in agreement with Sue that a sliding scale might be just the ticket with Fred.
For example, on the PM cycle of 2/17, you shot 3u on a 220 pre-shot. Fred was at 94 at +4, and I'm guessing he may have gone a fair bit lower a few hours later. Then the next cycle (AM of 2/18) looks fairly high and flat, and that definitely looks like bounce cycle. Not sure which direction he went on the PM cycle of 2/18. If I had to guess, maybe a bit of a lower nadir, but still looks bouncy. Then Fred appears to clear those bounces by around 2/19 for both cycles, but he probably went lower on a couple hours after the 114 you caught at +4, and he's bouncing this cycle again.
There's nothing per se bad about bouncing, other than it can be frustrating for mom and dad beans

.
Since it looks like, for example, that Fred is bouncing when you're shooting 3 or 2.5u's on those lower pre-shots, he may be going a fair bit lower than you're actually catching on your meter. I think it's worth a try to maybe do a trial of something like 2u on 200-250, 2.25u on 250-300, and 2.5u on 4u and see if you can get continuing good numbers while reducing those bounces a bit. It does look like 2.5 on a pre-shot in the lower 200's might be a smidge higher than necessary.
You'd have to either eyeball those quarter and half units on u40 syringes, or you can dose in increments of 0.2 units using u100 syringes and a conversion chart.
I use a sliding scale with Eddie and tweak it up or down depending on how he does with it.
The general idea behind sliding scales is sort of math-based. You figure out what you're aiming for at nadir, look at the number on the pre-shot, see how much insulin it took to accomplish that decrease when you had a cycle that looked good, and then adjust around that dose looking at percentages - for a simple explanation. Since ProZinc is in-and-out (mostly), you have the flexibility to adjust the dose as often as you need to, unlike the depot insulins like Lantus and Levemir. The other nice thing is, if something isn't working, you can scrap the plan and try something else without having to wait several cycles.
For a more complicated (and much better) explanation on the some of the math/proportion concepts behind sliding scales, check out this post on one of Eddie's condos where Carl helped me come up with a very effective sliding scale for Eddie:
http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=112998.
He's seeing some nice numbers in there! I think it's possible to achieve those better numbers perhaps more consistently if you can ease the bouncing just a little bit.