400 % temp basal........

[Adrienne]

Hiya

Both my Jessica and Bev's Alex have been ill and we have both been using 400 % + basals. Patricia asked how.

Temp basals only go up to 200% but if you activate Pattern A (or B if you already use pattern A for weekends) and set up some basals and put them on 200% it takes it way up.

So for example if your main rate at a particular time of the day was 0.5 u per hour you would set on pattern A 1.0 u per hour, that is already 100%. You then put on a 200% basal onto pattern A and you have 400 % as you would be getting 2 u per hour which is four times the original 0.5 u per hour as normal.


My numbers may be out but you have the idea. At one point yesterday we were even higher than that but no idea what the percentage was :

Jessica's normal basal at 9.30 to 11.30 am is 0.05 per hour. Well I set pattern A at 1.0 u so way way way over already and then put on a 200% so she was getting 2.0 u per hour.

Hope that makes sense.

This is with the Medtronic pumps but I'm sure you can do them with the others but don't know what the other pumps call patterns or temp basals. 😎

 

[Patricia]

Wow that is very cool Adrienne. Many thanks. Do you keep a separate pattern sort of updated to current basals so they can be adjusted in a moment, or do you set something up as and when... Just wondering because we have had to tweak quite a lot in last couple of months and would prob do best just making up a pattern on the spot - so as to know real percentages for future use...

Presumably you use these high basals in extremis, eg in times of high numbers and resistance? Not just highs.... We know something is belly up when a 150-200% plus correction is only having minimal effect. Rare, but great to have a way to override.

Phew. How is J?

 

[Adrienne]

Hi

I did happen to have Pattern A set sort of but it was when we used to use a different pattern for weekends but haven't used it for well over a year so I just tweaked that but I agree with you, if I didn't have that partially set I wouldn't bother pre setting anything I would do it on the spot.

Yes this is extreme. I have only done it once and that was yesterday. Luckily Jessica isn't normally ill so I don't have such resistence. She only went up to 19.5 but I just knew that I needed to do that. Not sure why but she had a temperature of 39.4 so I knew she would fight to keep going up so I just thought I would do it and luckily it worked.

She is ok and on antibiotics. The site infection is going down nicely and she has been painting today so I guess feeling better. 🙂

 

[Sugarbum]

Glad J is doing better Adrienne. 🙂

I wondered how you did such temp basals....I saw in FB you did 800% or something and it sounded mad! I thought you must be getting through a cartridge a day!

Thanks for sharing this. It never occurred to me that this little trick excisted.

🙂