Highs and More Highs

I’ve just had 4-5 days of blood glucose highs for no obvious reason. This happened through 3 site changes (clutching at straws for the reason), a new bottle of insulin, several calls and emails to my DE to confirm my actions were right, and generally through days of total chaos, not understanding what was going on.

I’ve had this many times on injections but only for a day or two. And back then I blamed it on absorption at the injection site, or not bolusing for carbs properly. In hindsight I think that was totally wrong.

A gazillion corrections as suggested by the pump, and a basal increase of 50% over many hours, barely did anything, and within 2 hours of corrections I was back where I started.

Speculation included getting sick, being stressed (I wasn’t) and more. None of it was true.

So what was the problem? Take any guess you like because I wouldn’t have a clue.

Yesterday my numbers started coming down and today I’m back to normal – no site change, nothing. I have not done or eaten anything different either. If anything I had less carbs once I realized what was happening. I didn’t want to deal with carbs that weren’t going to be corrected on top of my no-food BGLs being high.

Go figure!

Looking at other blogs and tweets, I know this happens to people… but what I’m reading more about is wild swings, from high to low to high – totally unexplained. That wasn’t the case for me – I just went high and stayed high with the insulin doing almost nothing.

It’s more than frustrating!

Lucky I’m a night owl. Night before last, I switched my basal to +30% for sleep. Lucky I stayed up a bit longer because at 4am I started to drop into my normal zone. I definitely would have had a hypo had I gone to sleep when I’d planned to.

When I checked, quite by chance, I was 4 mmol/L (72 mg/dl) with no hypo symptoms and basal at +30%. So off went the temp basal, and I headed for some glucose, and some longer-acting carbs, because that +30% basal would have still been working for a few hours. That’s my worst fear – a hypo at night (a nypo).

So last night, when I knew this high-phase was over, I went to bed on 6.2 mmol/L (111 mg/dl) and woke up with exactly the same BGL. Sweet! (Pun intended!)

So today, I’m completely back to normal. Stranger than strange!