A brief look at my bgl's from the last few days

[Sally71]

Probably you should have rounded down to 5 for 51 carbs, but whether that extra 0.5 was enough to make you go low is anybody’s guess, it depends what else you were doing and all sorts of other things. Sometimes hypos just happen for no obvious reason.

Don’t worry about this morning, what were your numbers like later? You might get away with it if you’re lucky! It’s never exact anyway, human bodies just don’t work like that. Some days you do all the calculations correctly and still get lows and highs, other days you don’t and it all works perfectly etc etc.

What you do need to decide though is whether you are going to continue using the bolus calculator or not. It’s useful to understand how it works in case you ever don’t have it (e.g. if you lose your phone or forget to charge it or something), but either you put your complete faith in it and just do what it says, or don’t use it any more and just do the calculations yourself. Most people prefer one or the other, don’t keep second guessing it though. A difference of a unit here and there is nothing. If it tells you to inject 15u when you were expecting more like 5 then yes check, but if it’s just a case of knocking a 0.5u correction off because you don’t think you are high enough then why recheck the carb amount if it looks about right? If you’re going to double check everything then you might as well forget the calculator and just do it yourself.

My daughter’s pump does all the calculations for her, I’ve no idea how the new one does it other than it’s not exactly the same as the Roche ones, she just puts her carbs in and off she goes and it doesn’t get it wrong very often, in fact we’re more likely to get problems if she overrides it. I’ve got a note of her ratios just in case the pump fails but never check what the pump is doing!

 

[Lucyr]

I’m not sure I understand how you’re calculating your doses, if the bolus advisor says 5u for the carbs, and you’re not doing the correction part because you’re under 10mmol, then I’d just take the 5u and not adjust it to increase the dose until you’re confident in how adjusting doses works. Hypos happen sometimes, it’s just part of diabetes, so long as you treat it appropriately and look out for any patterns in hypos to make changes then I wouldn’t worry about them, you’re never going to cut them out completely.

 

[mum2westiesGill]

Probably you should have rounded down to 5 for 51 carbs, but whether that extra 0.5 was enough to make you go low is anybody’s guess, it depends what else you were doing and all sorts of other things. Sometimes hypos just happen for no obvious reason.

Looking at it I think I should've dismissed the 1u correction off because of bgl being 9.8 and on DSN's advice of only correcting over 10mmol - then it would have been a straight 5u for 51g of carbs or as calculator says 5u for food which is what I should've done - why on earth did I do an extra 0.5u!!! It's probably the extra 0.5u that brought the hypo on.

 

[Inka]

If your DSN has advised you not to correct if you’re under 10, and you’re 9.8, just knock off the correction part of what the bolus advisor tells you and take the other part, which is just based on the carbs.

That way you’ve done it right.

 

[mum2westiesGill]

Don’t worry about this morning, what were your numbers like later? You might get away with it if you’re lucky! It’s never exact anyway, human bodies just don’t work like that. Some days you do all the calculations correctly and still get lows and highs, other days you don’t and it all works perfectly etc

When you said don't worry about this morning did you mean about the waking hypo of 3.8 or my post earlier in this thread with my stupid breakfast calculations? If it was the hypo then like you say I won't worry - if it was my stupid calculations I think all I should've done was knock the 0.5u correction off because of my bgl being 9.5 and done the advised 5u

 

[mum2westiesGill]

If your DSN has advised you not to correct if you’re under 10, and you’re 9.8, just knock off the correction part of what the bolus advisor tells you and take the other part, which is just based on the carbs.

That way you’ve done it right.

Hi @Inka thank you and that's exactly what I'm going to do in future and indeed what I have been doing so what got into me to do those other stupid calculations I just don't know!!!

 

[mum2westiesGill]

I’m not sure I understand how you’re calculating your doses, if the bolus advisor says 5u for the carbs, and you’re not doing the correction part because you’re under 10mmol, then I’d just take the 5u and not adjust it to increase the dose until you’re confident in how adjusting doses works. Hypos happen sometimes, it’s just part of diabetes, so long as you treat it appropriately and look out for any patterns in hypos to make changes then I wouldn’t worry about them, you’re never going to cut them out completely.

I'm not sure I understand how I 'was' calculating my doses either!! In future if I'm under 10mmol and the bolus advisor says 5u for carbs then that's what I will be doing but knock any advised correction off

So here I will take the 0.5u correction off and do the 5u for food

 

[Sally71]

When you said don't worry about this morning did you mean about the waking hypo of 3.8 or my post earlier in this thread with my stupid breakfast calculations? If it was the hypo then like you say I won't worry - if it was my stupid calculations I think all I should've done was knock the 0.5u correction off because of my bgl being 9.5 and done the advised 5u

Yes I was referring to your calculations - I hadn’t seen your morning reading! 3.8 is only borderline low though so I wouldn’t worry loads about that either 🙂

 

[mum2westiesGill]

Lunchtime 10.8 and probably this bgl because of ignoring my bolus calculator's advice at breakfast time of 5u for food and doing some stupid working out and only doing 4.5u!!
Anyway I've stuck with all that my bolus advisor has advised for lunch and because bgl is over 10mmol and on DSN's advice I can correct over 10mmol I've done the advised 1u correction and 6.5u for food 🙂

 

[mum2westiesGill]

Yes I was referring to your calculations - I hadn’t seen your morning reading! 3.8 is only borderline low though so I wouldn’t worry loads about that either 🙂

I think or know what does get me worried about any hypos or any highs over 10mmol is when my DSN's tone when she says in an email "you do appear to have quite a few higher readings" but she has explained over the phone that she's not criticising me

 

[Leadinglights]

I think sometimes you just have to go with your gut instinct on what to do.
It is sometimes a bit difficult to follow what is going on as you seem to post interrelated things in different threads, that might be of course because I'm unfamiliar with all the insulin and carbs related stuff so it is just me, but if you are getting helpful answers then that's fine.
I'm glad you enjoyed your trip to Chester, it is an interesting place, lots of posh shops. I remember as a kid going to Chester zoo and we were going to go a couple of years ago but I was surprised how expensive it was, we would have only had a short time so decided it wasn't worth it.

 

[Sally71]

We went to Chester Zoo a few years ago, was really good, definitely one of the best zoos I’ve been to, they tried really hard to make the animal enclosures as large as possible and as close to their natural habitat as possible. We did go early and got pretty much the whole day there, but it cost £78 for two adults and a child for one day - and then they had a monorail thing to get you round the site quicker but expected you to pay extra for that, plus various other add-ons - come on, I know they are doing good work trying to preserve rare animals, but that price would be completely prohibitive to a lot of people, and if it’s going to cost me an arm and a leg to get in then I expect everything to be included! (Except maybe food at the cafe, and you can always bring a picnic...) Either that or charge a bit less for the entry fee if you expect people to spend extra money on other things.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

because I follow the DSN's advice of only correcting over 10mmol I was going to knock the advised 1u correction off which then meant just having 5u but because my carb amount was 51g and lunchtime ratio 1:10 I did 5.5u of insulin - I was hypo at teatime 3.3

Well I’m in a bit of a muddle with your thinking there. 51g at 1:10 would have worked out at 5.1 units which would round down to 5u? And the hypo later means that there was too much insulin somehow - so if you had 5.5u somehow or other you found an extra unit’s worth of effect from somewhere, maybe more - your correction factor suggest you’d need 2u to get from 9.8mmol/L to hypo, but you only added an extra .5u.

Perhaps your correction factor is too strong and should be 3.5 or 3.8?

When was the last insulin you took before the meal?

This was breakfast this morning bgl was 9.5
I've probably made a wrong choice because I chose not to do the correction of 0.5u which then gave me 5u and because that didn't sound right I just did 4.5u of insulin
but then I worked out
38g of carbs ÷ 8 (1u:8g) = 4.75u so near enough to 5u so basically everything has gone wrong this morning

I suggest you adjust your breakfast ratio to 1:8 (assuming you can specify different time blocks) so that you can get the tricky maths worked for you.

What did you mean about ‘that didn’t sound right’?

And how did the dose work out?

 

[Lucyr]

The benefit of the bolus calculator is that you don’t need to do any maths, not even the subtracting correction doses.

If you do want to take the correction, read the “Bolus advice total” line. If you don’t want to take the correction read the “insulin (food)” line.

 

[mum2westiesGill]

Well I’m in a bit of a muddle with your thunking there. 51g at 1:10 would have worked out at 5.1 units which would round down to 5u? And the hypo later means that there was too much insulin somehow - so if you had 5.5u somehow or other you found an extra unit’s worth of effect from somewhere, maybe more - your correction factor suggest you’d need 2u to get from 9.8mmol/L to hypo, but you only added an extra .5u.

Perhaps your correction factor is too strong and should be 3.5 or 3.8?

When was the last insulin you took before the meal?

I'm in a muddle too about my thinking there - what on earth was I meaning?? I should've gone with 5u as the bolus advisor advised! On the actual advisor itself I deleted the 1u advised correction then I made the 5u into 5.5u buy why I really don't know! As you say it resulted in too much insulin.

My correction factor at the moment is 3mmol.

The last insulin I had was breakfast where my ratio is 1:8

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

The last insulin I had was breakfast

How many hours before the lunch was that?

 

[mum2westiesGill]

The benefit of the bolus calculator is that you don’t need to do any maths, not even the subtracting correction doses.

If you do want to take the correction, read the “Bolus advice total” line. If you don’t want to take the correction read the “insulin (food)” line.

Yeah I've learned by my huge wrong choices of things to do! I'm definitely staying with as you say "the benefit of the bolus advisor" and whatever it tells me apart from if I'm under 10mmol and don't want to take the correction.

Re if I don't want to take the correction I have to delete whatever the correction is which then just gives me the insulin (food) line on its own

 

[mum2westiesGill]

How many hours before the lunch was that?

Four hours and 5 minutes
Breakfast was 10:05am
Lunch was 14:10pm

 

[Inka]

I think or know what does get me worried about any hypos or any highs over 10mmol is when my DSN's tone when she says in an email "you do appear to have quite a few higher readings" but she has explained over the phone that she's not criticising me

That’s good that she explained she’s not criticising you. Sometimes health professionals don’t think enough about the tone they take. I think you’re doing well and you’re following your DSN’s advice.

 

[mum2westiesGill]

That’s good that she explained she’s not criticising you. Sometimes health professionals don’t think enough about the tone they take. I think you’re doing well and you’re following your DSN’s advice.

Awww thank you @Inka
Because of all the covid stuff I've not met her in person I've only either spoken on the phone or emailed