Monday's Diabetes February 24th

Last few hours of Sunday had 0.4 u/hr basal.

Bolused 3 unit correction at 2233 hours, another unit at 2322 hours.

At midnight the CGM read 265 and I bolused another half unit (which was a BAD IDEA). The basal rate went up to 0.7 u/hr.
At half past midnight I checked blood sugar getting ready to go to bed. CGM read 244 with a down arrow; meter read 151.I eat one and a half large graham crackers in an effort to counteract the IOB.

At 100 hrs, I was lying in bed not yet sleeping; CGM read 145.

At 200 hours, CGM read 115, I slept on.

At 300 hours, CGM read 110, I slept on.

At 400 hours, CGM read 138 and I slept on.

At 500 hours, CGM read 146 and I slept on.

At 600 hours, CGM read 107 and I got up. At 630, CGM read 139 and my meter read 143. Calibrated.

At 700 hours, CGM read 140. I was in the synagogue. At 728 my predicted high alarm went off and the CGM read 153.  I bolused 1 unit.

At 800 hours, CGM read 155.  I tried to bolus 9 units for breakfast. The pump claims to have delivered 8.95 units; it followed that with a MOTOR ERROR. I changed out the set. It probably took me 15 minutes before basal resumed at the lower, 8 am rate of 0.2 u/hr.
For breakfast, I first ate one cup of toasted oats with 3/4 cups soymilk. I felt nauseas, but didnt' throw up so about fifteen minutes later I ate one cup of frosted flakes with 3/4 cups soymilk. I didn't feel up to eating anything more.

At 900 hours CGM read 103. I missed the bus and walked to work (2 miles).

At 1000 hours CGM read 95

At 1100 hours CGM read 79. At 11:18 the Threshhold Suspend alarm went off and I told the pump to go ahead and suspend itself.
At 11:30 I ate about 20 grams of carbohydrate worth of white bread.

At 1200 hours CGM read 43.
At 1230 the CGM read 74 with an up arrow, and I restarted the basal for the pump.

At 1300 hours CGM read 94.

At 1400 hours CGm read  106   . Basal rose to 0.4 u/hr

At 1500 hours CGM read 123

At 1600 hours CGM read 125

At 1700 hours CGM read 148 and I bolused 10.5 units for supper. I ate 1 cup of beans, 1 cup of sticky rice (brown), 3 slices of bread, and some tempeh.  Also about a quarter cup of squash.

At 1800 hours CGM read 150 but I thought about how much I'd eaten and I bolused another 3 units. At 1853, my meter read 263.

At 1900 hours CGM read "WARM UP"

At 2000 hours, CGM read 255. At 2022 I bolused another 3 units.

At 2100 hours, CGM read 273.

At 2200 hrs, CGM read 199. At 2250, raised basal to 0.6 u/hr. At 2255, my meter read 82.

At 2300 hrs, CGM read 151. I ate half a bowl of frosted flakes.

The day ended with CGM reading 121

Monday's Diabetes February 17th

I've decided to log the hell out of Mondays for the next long while. Note: I don't count fiber in my carb counts.

So here is Monday, February 17th.

The last few hours of Sunday, I had had 0.4 u/hr as basal, had bolused 1 unit at 2032 hours, another 1 unit at 2137 hours, and 5.5 units at 2227 hours. I had eaten something.

At midnight starting Monday my CGM read 69. My basal switched to 0.65 u/hr.
At 0020 hours, I ate a fig bar (15 grams of carb) because I thought I was low.

At 0100 hours, the CGM read 101. I was thinking about bed, but feeling kind of low. At 0110, the CGM read 99, but my blood sugar on the meter was 232. I decided to leave it alone due to IOB. I went to sleep.

At 0200 hours, the CGM read 144. I slept on.

At 0300 hours, the CGM read 116. I slept on.

At 0400 hours, the CGM read 163. I slept on.

At 0500 hours, the CGM read 194. I slept on.

At 0600 hours, the CGM read 194. I slept on.

At 0700 hours, the CGM read 228. I slept on.

At 0800 hours, the CGM read 251. At 0830, because of the CGM, I took a 4 unit bolus. At 0835, I checked my blood sugar on the meter. The meter read 300 (accompanied by a thermometer because it is under 50 degrees Fahrenheit in my room and the meter doesn't think it should be trusted at that temperature). I bolused another 2 units.
My basal went down to 0.4 units/hr.

At 0900 hours, the CGM read 246.  I drank half a cup of soymilk at 0930(1 gram carbohydrate), plus some water, and left for work.

At 1000 hours, the CGM read 209. I lowered the basal to 0.2 u/hr.

At 1100 hours, the CGM read 123 and I was thinking about lunch.

At 1200 hours, the CGM read 62. About 1210, I ate an applesauce pouch (13 grams carbohydrate) and at 1235 I had a packet of maple syrup instant oatmeal (29 grams carbohydrate). At 1240 I bolused 1 unit (yes, a post bolus!)

At 1300 hours the CGM read 107.

At 1400 hours the CGM read 150. Basal went up to 0.4 u/hr.

At 1500 hours the CGM read 141.

At 1600 hours the CGM read 109, and I was wrapping up at work.

At 1700 hours, the CGM read 74 and I was walking home, so I had another applesauce pouch (13 grams). At 1725 when I got home, the CGM read 69 and my meter read 84.

At 1800 hours the CGM read 74.

At 1900 hours the CGM read  105. At 1905 hours, I bolused 13 units.
I ate two cups of cooked beans - two cups includes some water and also some carrot and onion cooked in, so probably around 50 grams (this is where the fiber really matters- it would be 80-90 grams if I included fiber).
After about 45 minutes, I ate three slices of my father's whole wheat bread, weighing 140 grams which comes to about 63 grams of carbohydrate.
I ate it with 2 cups of my mother's stewed tomatoes. 22 grams carbohydrate, and 14 olives (they were not salted, and probably add 1 gram of non-fiber carbohydrate).
Total meal: 136 grams carbohydrate.

At 2000 hours the CGM read 82.
At 2045 hours I ate 6 cups of popcorn (30 grams) and about a tablespoon of Brewer's Yeast (7 grams). I bolused 3.5 towards the end of the hour.

At 2100 hours the CGM read 152.

At 2200 hours the CGM read 159.

At 2300 hours the CGM read 163. However, the meter read 132 at 2315 hours.

Monday closed with the CGM reading 159 (with an up arrow, but I don't think it means it).


Conclusions?
Well, my supper ratio of 1:10 seems to work pretty darn well. I probably should have bolused a teensy weensy bit more.
I'm not sure if my overnight basal is okay or what. What with that extremely discordant CGM/meter pair around 1 am, it's hard to know if I really rose all night or if the CGM just caught up to the meter. Probably need more basal.

Paying attention today taught me that I forgot to reset the DIA for this new pump. It was set at 6 hours and so it was making my IOB bigger than it should have been (my real DIA is probably around 4 hours). Also, I'm not prebolusing like I thought I was.

Another One Bites The Dust

Yesterday morning as I was lying in bed trying to convince myself it was time to get up, my pump alarmed A52. It restarted and then it wanted me to reset the time, etc. I spent some time with that, then went to work.
This evening, when I attempted to bolus for supper, I got a No Delivery alarm; I cleared it and tried again and got another No Delivery.
I tried to call medtronic and got a "the wait time for a representative is over 30 minutes" so I hung up, took a shot, and had supper.
I called again and got a representative with no wait time at all (I think that's the first time that's happened). Due to the A52 alarm, they are replacing this pump, too.

For the record, pump #2 lasted about three weeks.

Dear Medtronic, PLEASE NOTE, YOUR BACKLIGHT IS NOT FOOLPROOF

I woke up around 1:40 am, hypo and confused. I was trying to get to the backlight on my pump. I knew I had set the CGM graph to not turn itself off (I did that for the sabbath so I wouldn't have to press buttons so much) and that I had figured out that if I just pressed ACT ESC DOWN from any of the main four screens, it should then give me the backlight.
Parenthetically, I had gotten tired of trying to guess how many times I needed to press ESC before getting to the home screen, from which I could press DOWN to get the backlight- there is no way other than getting to the homescreen first or turning on an alarm to get to the backlight generally speaking.
Well, it didn't work, probably because I pressed down first or something.  It made some "cancel" noises. It made some beep noises. I wondered if I was drawing a monster with an etch a sketch atnd I started pressing lots of buttons. Still no backlight. Was it broken?

Finally, I got out of bed and turned on the light. I was on the main menu screen. I hit escape and scrolled through the screens. The CGM screen was reading 49; it was on the 6 hour screen and I could see a big drop had happened until about 10:30, when I was still awake and had treated it; it had gone up a bit to about 75, which was when I had fallen asleep. After I fell asleep it fell to about 46 and then rose.
I went to utilities and saw that I had had the threshhold suspend kick in; I guess I turned it off while trying to turn on the backlight (that would be the second time I've done that- the first time I didn't realize what I'd done, thought the suspend feature didn't work, and called the helpline people, who took an hour to tell me I had turned it off myself- oy my sleep).

So I went and ate and treated the hypo and then I scrolled through the screens and noticed something funny. On the Sensor Status Screen, it said Next Cal: 13:46.
That meant that I had entered a calibration at 1:46.
Big problem, I didn't remember entering any calibration at 1:46.
I went to main menu ->sensor-> calibration hist-> and it told me that my most recent calibration had been at 22:38 hours, and was a bg of 75, just like I thought.
But I happen to know that medtronic does not put calibrations in the history until 15 minutes after they've been entered, and it was less than 15 minutes after 1:46. Medtronic doesn't enter them in the history because medtronic doesn't USE them for 15 minutes after they've been entered (to account for the theoretical 15 minute lag, which, btw, is seriously theoretical). This allows it to also have a sort of nice feature which is that if you enter in two calibrations within 15 minutes, it assumes the first one was in error.
That meant I had until 2:01 to enter in a real calibration or it was going to use whatever it was I had entered by accident.  I made it just in time. My real calibration says my bg was 69 mg/dl at 2:02 am (no I don't know why that was in time, it shouldn't have been by my calculations).

So, lesson learned, I better turn on the Lock Keypad feature before bedtime. Because next time I might bolus myself by accident. Or enter in another bogus calibration leading to some very bogus numberss turning on a bogus  threshhold suspend and making me wonder what the heck was wrong with my CGM.

Dear Medtronic, please please please put a backlight button on your next pump that can be turned on from ANY screen.