Hyper to hypo help! Response to vaccine?

[StephanieMLW]

Hello lovely people,

I’m wondering if anyone can give me some tips or insight into why my sugars might be all over the place the last 24 hours. Apologies in advance for the long post!!

To give some background: I’m type 1, only diagnosed a month so very much learning! I’m on 6 units of Lantus at night and Novorapid before carbs; I’m carb counting 1 unit to 10g with correction doses over blood sugars of 9. Been on a Libre 2 for a week.

So far, I’ve been pleased at my BG levels; according to my Libre I’m in range 87% of the time. However the last 24 hours have been pretty rubbish and I can’t understand what’s going wrong.

Yesterday I travelled to see friends in London, and went for dinner at Pho - specifically as they have a menu showing carbs. I did the following:

19:40: BG 6.6. 3 units Novorapid 10 mins before starter (vegan spring rolls) containing 33g of carbs.
My friend ended up eating some of my stater! So I worked out I only consumed 15g of carbs.
20:30: BG 10.4. My main had 44g of carbs, so I minused the 15g I hadn’t consumed, to give me 29g of carbs. I was having a small glass of dry white wine, which previously has caused my sugars to drop, so I thought to play it safe and give only 2units Novorapid 10mins before my main (tofu noodles). I didn’t give a correction dose due to insulin stacking.
21:30: took my Lantus dose as usual before leaving the restaurant. BG 12.7.

On my train home, my Libre alarm was constantly going off that my sugars were high. I was starting to panic as I was alone on a train at night, this was my first trip on my own since diagnosis!

22:30: BG 17, decided to do a correction dose of 3 units Novorapid. Felt a bit weird doing this on the train in front of everyone! Gradually BG dropped.
01:30: BG 8.5 and I felt safe to go to bed. I had no ketones and felt ok.
03:30: my Libre woke me up for low BG (4.2). had a piece of wholemeal toast. Dips at this time aren’t too uncommon for me.
08:30: BG was 8.7 upon waking.

I thought perhaps the timing/amount of my Novorapid or the sauces on the food were to blame for last nights hyper. This morning I had my usual breakfast (wholemeal toast, sugar free peanut butter) and everything looked normal. However, this then happened:

Lunch @ 12:50 - BG 6.8. Carbs of 58g, took 6 units Novorapid 15 mins before eating.
14:00 - BG up to 11.5
15:30 - BG up to 14.6. Took a brisk 30 min walk.
16:15 - BG 9.3
18:00 - low sugar alarm! BG 4.3. Had tea and a digestive.

I feel like I’ve been really yo-yo ing between high and low the last 24 hours - it’s really frustrating as I’m doing exactly what I have been up until this point, so I don’t know what is going wrong. I found out I was diabetic due to a hospital admission with DKA, so it does really scare me when my numbers shoot up as I start to panic I’ll be back where I was. Perhaps this also doesn’t do my BG any favours if it’s on the rise and I start to get stressed about it?

The only real external variable is the covid jab I had - however I had the booster early Wednesday and this has been happening since Friday evening, which seems a bit of a delayed reaction?

Apologies for the long post, but if anyone fancies some problem solving and can see what I could be doing better I’d appreciate any advice.

Thank you!!

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Apologies for the long post, but if anyone fancies some problem solving and can see what I could be doing better I’d appreciate any advice.

Dunno. Might just be you're newly diagnosed which probably means your pancreas is still producing some (variable) amount of insulin. Or maybe it was the vaccination (I found they all took me a bit lower than normal but other people have found they raised the BG levels).

Regardless, I think you handled all the situations perfectly well and the occasional peak of 15 isn't terrible. I have days when that kind of thing happens.

If you keep going a bit high after lunch and dinner (but not breakfast), obviously consider increasing the bolus for lunch a bit and see if that works. (That is, do 1 unit for 9g carbs or something. Or do something more sloppy like add a unit (or half a unit) when you're eating over 50g of carbs. Whatever seems simple enough to do, really.)

 

[helli]

Did you check your blood sugars with a finger prick?
It is possible that your sensor was having a funny turn, especially if it has been newly inserted.

Apart from that, it could be many things : food digesting faster than the insulin worked, stress of being out along for the first time since diagnosis, rushing to the restaurant., if you were drinking this could be the root cause of the BG wobble.