Diabetes Jenga, BG Kerplunk

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everydayupsanddowns

everydayupsanddowns

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Just chuckled to myself having checked the bolus wait time for breakfast. I got a bit distracted answering posts, and am currently cruising at about 45 minutes post bolus.

A few weeks ago I was having to set a phone alarm at 10 minutes to avoid the risk of BG dipping shortly after my toast.

I’ve tweaked my basal since then (and timings returned to their ‘normal’ 20 mins - but clearly my diabetes is having none of that predictability nonsense, and has opted for a beefier liver dump. Or something!

Sometimes it feels like tweaking doses is playing one of those teetering balance games where you have to gingerly move something a tiny amount and then hold your breath hoping the whole fragile tower doesn’t collapse in a heap! :D
 
Reminds me how I find basal tweaking on my pump a bit like Whack a Mole.
I increase my basal at 7am because my liver dump has become a bit more aggressive and then I go too low at 10am so I decrease it at 9am and it goes too high by 11am so I ...
It's as if I need a smaller basal difference than 0.05 units every hour.
 
Beefy liver dump??? Sounds like some kind of grim pie!
But seriously, what is a liver dump? A spike after breakfast?
 
Tom1982 said:
Beefy liver dump??? Sounds like some kind of grim pie!
But seriously, what is a liver dump? A spike after breakfast?
Click to expand...
Hello, it happens in the morning for some of us. After waking or just before? I put it down to a response setting me up for a potential hectic “school day.” (Or work.)
 
Tom1982 said:
Beefy liver dump??? Sounds like some kind of grim pie!
But seriously, what is a liver dump? A spike after breakfast?
Click to expand...
A liver dump is our helpful body deciding that we may be starving or needing some extra energy so our liver will dump some glucose.
Typically, this happens when we have been fasting for some time such as overnight or when we start moving, usually when we get out of bed but some people also experience a rise in BG when the start exercising.
You may have seen this referred to a Dawn Phenomenon (the dump happens in the early hours of the morning) or Foot on the Floor (the dump happens when you put your first foot on the floor when you get up).

This happens for most people regardless of diabetes. It is only those of us with diabetes who are lucky enough to notice it because our pancreas does not respond with an insulin dump.
 
everydayupsanddowns said:
Just chuckled to myself having checked the bolus wait time for breakfast. I got a bit distracted answering posts, and am currently cruising at about 45 minutes post bolus.

A few weeks ago I was having to set a phone alarm at 10 minutes to avoid the risk of BG dipping shortly after my toast.

I’ve tweaked my basal since then (and timings returned to their ‘normal’ 20 mins - but clearly my diabetes is having none of that predictability nonsense, and has opted for a beefier liver dump. Or something!

Sometimes it feels like tweaking doses is playing one of those teetering balance games where you have to gingerly move something a tiny amount and then hold your breath hoping the whole fragile tower doesn’t collapse in a heap! :D
Click to expand...
I hope that things settle down for you soon, as much as our diabetes ever does.
It is definitely a juggling act. Mind you juggling seemed quite hard, especially as we have so many balls to be playing with.
 
Tom1982 said:
Beefy liver dump??? Sounds like some kind of grim pie!
But seriously, what is a liver dump? A spike after breakfast?
Click to expand...

Yeah it’s the ole Dawn Phemonenon / Foot on the Floor thing. Glucose released from the liver just before waking, or on getting out of bed to ‘fire up the burners’ for the day. Mostly relatively predictable and consistent. Except of course sometimes you have periods where it happens more, or less, or hardly at all.

I usually add 10g to the carb value of breakfast to account for it - but looking at today’s graph even with the much longer prebolus timing, there hasn’t been enough dose. And my breakfast is exactly the same. So my suspicion is on my pesky liver.

1716543890574.jpeg

I’d usually hope to see the graph levelling out around 8ish before dropping back down. But the rise is steeper, and continuing! Something else is happening.
 
The plot thickens…

1716550386916.jpeg

Multiple corrections from the pump (hollow squares) and also bigger ones from me (solid squares). Plus a 10 minute walk to ‘activate’ the sluggish insulin.

Set change before breakfast. So now it’s looking (at least in part) like one of those sites that only gets going after about 5-6u have been delivered into it.

As you say @SB2015 - sometimes there are a few too many balls to keep your eye on 🙄
 
It must be because it’s a Friday @everydayupsanddowns Or maybe a butterfly has done an extra flap of its wings somewhere this morning. Or socks.

My Foot on the Floor has been ok all week - a rise of around 2mmol - but today it decided to make up for it by shooting me from 4.9 to 10.4 in half an hour 😱 I did a correction (with my pen) but it didn’t seem to work and my blood sugar stayed around 9 all morning, which is nothing like what normally happens. I usually have to have a snack at work and maybe some Dextro to keep me running along smoothly, but today the idiot blood sugar was determined to be high despite what I did🙄

I’m just about to do a set change to see if that has any effect. Some days are just a pain.
 
everydayupsanddowns said:
The plot thickens…

View attachment 30369

Multiple corrections from the pump (hollow squares) and also bigger ones from me (solid squares). Plus a 10 minute walk to ‘activate’ the sluggish insulin.

Set change before breakfast. So now it’s looking (at least in part) like one of those sites that only gets going after about 5-6u have been delivered into it.

As you say @SB2015 - sometimes there are a few too many balls to keep your eye on 🙄
Click to expand...
I am sure I really don't need ned to suggest this to an old hand like you but in case anyone reads this in the future, I will ask if you have checked your cannula site and maybe done a recent set change.
 
helli said:
I am sure I really don't need ned to suggest this to an old hand like you but in case anyone reads this in the future, I will ask if you have checked your cannula site and maybe done a recent set change.
Click to expand...

Well yes, I do give them a quick check / inspection when things start to unexpectedly run awry like this. Often just a quick dab of a finger and a sniff for the telltale scent of “this site is tunneling insulin darn it’.

Bit it’s a good reminder, especially when you already have A Theory that the errant BGs are conveniently supporting.

However as the morning blended into the afternoon, and my lunch dose also misbehaved, I swapped the site out, and hey-presto normal-chaos* has returned. Wahoo!

* As opposed to abnormal and perplexing chaos
 
Glad that you have sorted things. Sometimes there is no logic to anything!!!!
 
Bloden said:
So the HCL doesn’t stop the frustration of living with T1...kind of depressing, really.
Click to expand...
For me it does for most of the time. There are blips but far fewer and when HcL is working I don’t need to think about diabetes apart from at meals and when exercising. It will let me know if I need to get involved as it errs on the side of caution.

Well worth having for those benefits, but we are still dependent on the sensor working, cannula sites, insulin okay, … Not a cure but a big helping hand.
 
helli said:
Reminds me how I find basal tweaking on my pump a bit like Whack a Mole.
I increase my basal at 7am because my liver dump has become a bit more aggressive and then I go too low at 10am so I decrease it at 9am and it goes too high by 11am so I ...
It's as if I need a smaller basal difference than 0.05 units every hour.
Click to expand...
This is me on my period. Whack a mole
 
SB2015 said:
Well worth having for those benefits, but we are still dependent on the sensor working, cannula sites, insulin okay, … Not a cure but a big helping hand.
Click to expand...

That’s good to hear @SB2015 - we all need a helping hand!
 
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