There are lots of people who work full time - have you taken a look at the sticky on
following Tight Reg with a full time job? I haven't met you yet - welcome to the board! - so perhaps some of this is a repeat for you, but I'll throw out a few suggestions.
- If you can't test during the day cycle, try to get a test as late as possible before you go to bed. Some people will move their shot time earlier so that they can get a test as late as possible at night. We shot punkin at 7am/7pm and I always stay up til at least 11pm, so I could easily get a +4 after his pm shot.
- You may see some improvement if you follow one of the dosing guides we use. Right now it looks like you are changing doses based upon the preshot number, perhaps. Is that right? With depot insulins like Lantus and Lev, dose changes are based upon how low the dose can cause the blood sugar to go, with the preshot number being somewhat less important. Since Tilica's eating dry food, you would follow the Start Low Go Slow guidelines. It calls for doing a curve once a week and making dosing decisions based upon how low the cat's blood sugar is during that curve.
Giving a slightly smaller dose at preshot isn't very likely to change how that particular cycle plays out. You're working with a depot insulin, which means that some insulin is built up in the body which continues to give out. When one reduces a dose, it can take 4-6 cycles for that larger depot to reduce. In other words, if you really want to change how a cycle is going to happen because the preshot is low, you'd have to give a significant reduction, say a 10%-50% dose. Otherwise it's pretty likely that just a 0.25u reduction isn't going to have much of a change on what would've happened if you hadn't reduced the dose at all. I hope that makes sense - I'm having a hard time saying it clearly!! Ask if it's confusing - others can explain it as well.
I'm not sure what your notes on the spreadsheet for the past 2 mornings mean. Are you stalling in the morning and shooting late, perhaps? The spreadsheet only indicates the time in between shots - not the clock time. So whatever number you shoot always goes in the preshot column. If you shoot late, then the previous cycle just gets longer. If you shoot 2 hours late, you've shot at +14. That would be 14 hours after your previous shot.
You can show it in your preshot column like this:
+12 100
+14 250
then in the dose column it would say whatever amount you shot.
Maybe I don't have it right - but I think you're trying to show that you're shooting late. Just remember that it doesn't matter what time you usually shoot - you're always counting how many hours since the last shot. I hope that helps.
Hope things settle down at work for you!
for you and Teasel.