Wrong insulin & Covid

[djdave]

Well, after catching what I thought was a heavy cold and sore throat on Boxing Day, I came home & rested up. Thought I'd test for covid yesterday afternoon, just in case, and it came up +ve! Quick messages to the few people I had seen over Christmas just in case!

Then after a restless night of coughing and snotty nose, I woke up this morning (well, apparently only half woke up) and took my 'basal' only to look down and realise I had injected my bolus (7u Trurapi instead of Semglee); Quick catchup with the real basal and off to the kitchen to find some carbs!

I was a bit worried at first, but it was a nice change looking for carbs instead of wondering what I should eat! Running on around 9.9 peak so not too bad a guess at what I should eat!

Yesterday my graph on my CGM looked mad - loads of peaks rather than the normal 3 peaks at meal times.

Guess my New Year is going to be a bit quieter this year 😛 All those 'normies' out there don't know what they are missing! Hope you all have a wonderful New Year!

 

[SB2015]

I hope that you were able to savour those ‘free’ carbs, and that you are on the mend soon.

 

[rebrascora]

Sorry to hear you are down with Covid. Hope it is mild and clears up quickly. Sounds like you managed your mistake really well.
I did the same thing a few years ago and my basal is significantly larger than yours. It was 24u at the time and I use Fiasp as my bolus insulin which is faster than NR and I only needed 4u for breakfast, so I had a lot more eating to do than you and in fact I was starting to worry that I might not have enough carbs in the house to cover it as I follow a low carb way of eating. The panic was worse than the actual problem, but like everything with diabetes, you learn from your mistakes. 🙄

 

[helli]

I find the panic raises my BG so doesn't require as many carbs as you think.

 

[Proud to be erratic]

Well done @djdave, for managing your unplanned insulin switch; we've all been there at some time or other. I also hope your Covid doesn't cause you any more "stress" and leaves your BG alone.

I ought to have flagged you up to @AlexRM, earlier today, a new T3c after a total pancreatectomy in September.

 

[Eternal422]

You’re not alone! I did the exact same thing a few months back, taking 28U of Novorapid instead of Levemir. Bit scary and I really didn’t feel like eating much at 10pm, but managed to stave off any hypo with yoghurts and dextrose tablets! No idea why I made the mistake, but I’m more careful now!

 

[mashedupmatt]

I've done that too - shot down the local shop and bought a loaf of thick sliced white bread and had 3 bacon sarnies and continued snacking on crisps afterwards - thankfully it did the trick!

 

[gillrogers]

Ooh ive done similar bit gave me basal instead of bolus when i first switched toboth. I was a eating a bowl of porridge every couple of hours for 24 hours lol. I now keep my basal upstairs well away from thr table.

 

[dannybgoode]

I keep my basal and bolus completely separately and they're in different coloured pens and my basal pen is a 1U version and my bolus 1/2U.

All set up like this as I'm pretty clumsy and could easily get them wrong otherwise.

I think if I did get it wrong I'd just get a pizza delivered though!

 

[rebrascora]

I keep my basal and bolus completely separately and they're in different coloured pens and my basal pen is a 1U version and my bolus 1/2U.

All set up like this as I'm pretty clumsy and could easily get them wrong otherwise.

I think if I did get it wrong I'd just get a pizza delivered though!

Not sure if that was a serious comment about pizza but think again because pizza is too slow release and if you have an excess of bolus insulin on board, it could easily cause you to be hypo long before the pizza had time to release it's glucose.

 

[dannybgoode]

Not sure if that was a serious comment about pizza but think again because pizza is too slow release and if you have an excess of bolus insulin on board, it could easily cause you to be hypo long before the pizza had time to release it's glucose.

Half joke. I'd load up on quick carbs and then use the pizza to mop things up over the time the NR was active 🙂

 

[Lucyr]

Half joke. I'd load up on quick carbs and then use the pizza to mop things up over the time the NR was active 🙂

I’m not sure that would work… in the hypothetical situation of taking NR instead of basal then ordering a pizza you’d have taken the insulin what 30-45 minutes before eating the pizza. But pizza is so slow that people wouldn’t usually prebolus by 30-45 minutes, they’d take some insulin either just before or just after eating, then a bit more ages later.

I think if you took double basal or something pizza could be a good idea, but if you took too much novorapid you’d need something like toast, porridge, biscuits, with a decent proportion within about 30 mins of injecting and the rest nibbled through the time that it’s active.