Re: Update on Rusty and question about his treatment with P
Easy question first. ;-)
When you are posting a message, do you have a bunch of smilies showing up on the right hand side of the screen? If so, all you have to do is click on one of them to put it in your message. There is a setting in your "control panel" that you can check.
In the control panel, click on the "board preferences" tab. Then click on the left hand side on the "edit posting defaults" link. There will be four "defaults" listed. The top 3 should be set to "yes", and the bottom one to "no". See if that helps?
Second - good job getting the spreadsheet up and running!
OK, there's no simple answer to why Rusty read so low this morning. He has gotten that sort of response from this dose before, as far as how low his numbers have gone. Usually though, that has happened "in the middle" of the cycle like you would expect it to happen. Last night, it looks like his cycle ran a lot longer than normal. There's a chance that at some time before the 12 hour mark, he was lower than 95, but not necessarily.
You did the right thing this morning, stalling and shooting once you saw the number rising. And reducing was also the right thing, IMO.
Just so I understand it, you fed him at AMPS time, then waited until 2 hours later (and the 282 BG) before you gave the shot, right? The only thing you didn't do "right" (and it isn't a huge deal) is that you fed him. If this happens again, what you want to do is stall without feeding (even if he hates the idea). You want to wait until the number comes up, but you want it to come up on it's own which it will as the insulin from the prior doses peters out. If you feed without shooting, the food will make the numbers come up, and when you test in the next hour or two, at least a part of the increased BG number will be due to the food. So you can't be sure how much is "food", and how much is "insulin wearing off".
Even though you did get a series of tests that showed numbers coming up, by reducing you made up for the "food boosted BG" by giving less insulin. If you had shot a full dose, that may have been more of an issue.
Lately, it looks like Rusty responds to the insulin better during the PM cycles than the AM cycles. Is there any obvious reason for that? Does he eat differently (more, less) day and night? Is he more active during the nighttime?
As far as the syringes, I had the same problem. I used syringes with no half unit marks, and dosing between the lines wasn't easy on my bifocular vision. :smile: One thing to consider trying is to use different syringes. You can use U100 syringes along with a "U40 to U100 conversion chart". There are a couple advantages to doing that. One is that most U100's come with 1/2 unit marks. The other is that you can see the insulin more easily because it "looks" like you are drawing a lot more up into the syringe. You aren't. If your dose was 2u in a U40 syringe, you would draw up to the 5u mark in a U100 syringe. The conversion factor is "times 2.5". Sounds confusing, but it's all figured out for you on the chart. I never did this, but I think most people here do. If you think this would help, plenty of people can help you understand it better than I just did!
Carl
