Guest Post: From Dx to X2 (Tandem T:Slim) by Robert S

This is a guest post by Robert S who dropped me a line via FaceTwit as he had been  writing down his 'diabetes story' but didn't have a blog to share it on. Apparently he has been good enough (or mad enough?) to read my ramblings in the past and offered it as a guest post for sharing here. His story echoes much of my own, and I am very interested to read that he has chosen the Tandem T:slim X2 insulin pump out of the current offerings, as that is one I have quietly got my eye on too. Here is Robert's story. Enjoy!

Tandem T:slim X2

My Diabetes Story, by Robert S

I was diagnosed in 1994 at the age of 38, about 10 years after my older sister who had (eventually) been diagnosed at a similar age. I was given a number of very vague, unhelpful leaflets & sent on my way.

I spent the next few years religiously taking insulin as instructed but with pretty poor results.

Diabetes clinics were a trial for me, with many 'must do betters' but precious little advice on how to achieve this. Several times I was mistaken for type 2 & had some very odd conversations. I probably presented as typical type 2, middle aged and overweight, and most people at the clinic were type 2. However they clearly hadn't read my notes which didn't inspire confidence.

I was divorced during this period so I was very much dealing with it on my own.

The internet arrived & eventually I discovered diabetes forums. Wow, what a revelation! There were other people having the same problems as me. A LOT of people! Bad news for them but a great relief that it wasn't just me.

Importantly some of these people were working to improve their diabetes & describing how.

At the time of my diagnosis carbohydrate 'exchanges' seemed to be going out of favour but for me, at least, carb counting was a very vague concept.

The forums prompted me to do the online carb counting course set up by Bournemouth Diabetes & Endocrinology Centre (BDEC). It didn't solve all my problems but for the first time I felt I had a method for moving forward.

By this time I had moved from 'Humulin I' & 'Humulin S' to a basal/bolus regime, which also helped.

My GP surgery contacted me suggesting that they monitor my diabetes now they had a Diabetes Nurse. Being rather disillusioned by my experiences in the clinic system I accepted.

I enjoy programming & wrote software for my phone to record everything & do some basic dosage computations. My HbA1c had never been really terrible, usually in the low 8s (8% or 64mmol/mol, Ed), but I honestly don't know how. Some hard work got it down to the mid 7s (7.5% or 59mmol/mol, Ed).

So the situation had improved somewhat & I felt more in control.

Sadly, another event encouraged my efforts, as my sister died from diabetic complications at the age of 64.

From the beginning hypos were an almost daily event. The worst being overnight. I've always had good hypo warnings, but at night hypos tend to progress further & I would wake up soaked in sweat.

By 2013 though, the overnight hypos seemed to be worse. I discussed it with the diabetes nurse at my GP practice but the best advice was always eat some supper & don't go to bed below 8mmol/L. I was already doing this.

I'd read about Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs) which looked very interesting, but were way too expensive for me and, I noted, you still needed to do finger sticks.

Things came to a head on Boxing Day night 2013. I was away staying (alone) in a hotel & I woke up with a hypo around 1:30. Dragged myself out of bed managed to force a some glucose tablets & a biscuit down me & fell asleep. The next thing I knew I was waking curled up in a ball under the duvet, sweating yet shivering to the point where my teeth were chattering continuously. The worst thing was that I couldn't move to do anything about it. Eventually I fell asleep wondering if I'd wake up.

I decided to self fund a Dexcom G4, at least for a while. By the end of January 2014 I was wearing my first CGM. I watched it obsessively. On the second day I attended a graduation ceremony and was offered a glass of Bucks Fizz & a blueberry muffin. I thought I was being sensible & only ate about a third of the muffin & bolused for it. The effect on my blood sugars was fascinating. I watched as the graph went up, & up & up. I don't remember how high but it was an eye opener.

Initially it was more about the alarms which warned me in time to stop low blood sugars. Still annoying at night but I no longer woke up sweating.

I began to learn from the readings. The first big thing I noticed was a fairly consistent dip in my blood sugars around 1:30 to 2:30 in the morning. This made it difficult get my overnight average to a sensible level & went some way to explaining the nocturnal hypos. I tried varying the time that I was injecting my basal (Lantus) moving it from evening to morning, or splitting the dose. Nothing was really satisfactory.

Someone in the DOC (Diabetes Online Community) suggested changing my basal insulin. After chatting to my GP I moved to Levemir. I had a lot of trouble sorting out the dose, being quite worried that I had to take so much more than I had of Lantus. It was a split dosage & gradual adjustments left morning/evening doses very different, but, it was working. I saw some fairly horizontal overnight graphs, something I'd never ever seen before.

This encouraged me & I also made other adjustments; splitting boluses for some meals, not being afraid to do corrections between meals & so on.

Nothing was perfect but I did feel more 'in control'. Things still went wrong but when they did I was confident I could put it right. My HbA1c went below 7% (53mmol/mol) for the first time.

Using online instructions I built a box of electronics which allowed my Dexcom sensor data to be transmitted to my mobile phone. Thanks to #WeAreNotWaiting I set up a NightScout website to display my data.

This was all great, but hard work. I was doing a lot of injections, up to 12 a day. Also absorption of my basal injections was rather erratic, sometimes as I would expect, sometimes not. The best location was my thigh, but despite rotating sites there were problems.

By this time I'd been reading about hybrid closed loop (artificial pancreas) systems. First the DIY systems OpenAPS, Loop, and AndroidAPS, then the first commercial system the Medtronic 670G. This was exciting stuff but it was clear that first you needed to have an insulin pump. I had in fact been offered one about 15 years before but was then horrified at the thought of being permanently connected to the thing.

I decided I would now like to try one. It was not something my GP surgery could sort out so I had to be referred back to the hospital. This proved to be a long process, several months. I still don't know why. Eventually it went through just before Christmas.

By the time I met up with the DSN at the hospital a month or so later I had all but convinced myself I was wasting my time as control was simply too good?

Sure enough the DSN was impressed with my readings but it didn't help my case. I pointed out that I was doing a lot of injections each day. Not relevant.

"How many hypos do you have?"
"Hardly any."
"Yes, but that's with the Dexcom you are funding?" This wonderful lady was on my side & looking to find a way.
"Lots, nasty ones, that's why I bought it"
"That's it! Now let's have a look at the pumps you could have."

What! Really! To be honest I would have accepted some dusty old pump from the back of a drawer..

But when I focused on what she was saying I could barely believe my ears. I'd done a lot of homework on pumps & she was mentioning the Medtronic MM640G & the most advanced, the 'Artificial Pancreas' MM670G.

Then she added the Tandem T:slim X2 to the list. Again I'd read about it but thought it was only available in the USA. Positively it would soon be linked to the Dexcom G6 I was already using. I love my G6 & it seems to compare favourably with the Medtronic sensors. (Not that I had any personal experience of them).

Uniquely the software (firmware) of the X2 can be updated & in the UK will soon include Basal-IQ, a system which automatically suspends insulin if it thinks you will go low. There is also the promise of a full hybrid closed loop option similar to the Medtronic 670G - again an over the internet update.

I made my decision; the T:slim X2. By mid March after a couple of training sessions, I walked out of the hospital attached to my pump. Very exciting & not a little nerve racking!

We had agreed a 30% reduction in the basal dosage compared to my Levemir. A profile was set up.

During the evening it became clear to me that this was still too much & changed to an 80% temporary basal rate (TBR).

My Dexcom woke me about 1:30. I dropped the temporary basal to 75% and had a small snack. Readings got 'stuck' in the low 4s & eventually I ate again and reduced to a 60% TBR.

So not much sleep but at least I was closer to the required dosage. One thing that I kept thinking that night was "How does anyone do this without a CGM??" Presumably they start with a much more conservative dosage.

I had worried about what to do with the pump at night, and it was a problem. Clipping it on my waistband sort of worked but it would slide along to an uncomfortable place or slip off completely. I now have a 'Spibelt' with a pocket for the pump which is much better.

A week in now & I'm doing remarkably well, some days over 90% of my readings have been 'in range' - between 3.9 & 9.9mmol/L. I know this is probably just a 'honeymoon period', having had type 1 for over 20 years I find I'm waiting for reality to reassert itself & everything to go wrong...

The pump itself is a very neat device. It is small & has a nice clear touch screen. If you are used to smartphones then it is easy to use. It seems well made, time will tell.

I've had some practice with temporary basal rates as mentioned but I've also been playing with 'Extended Boluses' a new concept to me, promising, but I need to experiment.

As with all pumps the big advantage is the same as the big disadvantage - namely that it is always connected to you. It's great that I don't have to remember my pens & I won't miss those injections - I stopped counting at about 50,000 several years ago.

A big advantage is that you have a record of every dose. No longer do I have to wonder 'Did I do that or not?'

There's also the precision of boluses & the in built Bolus Wizard (Calculator). I am learning to trust the IOB (Insulin On Board) figure on the pump. Previously I had tended to intervene too soon when blood sugars rose quickly.

I'm told that changing infusion sets on the X2 is slow, but it seems OK to me having never used anything else.

I'm looking forward to improving my settings & the upgrades mentioned above.

For the first time in my diabetic life I feel as though I am 'ahead of the game', and yes, I know I am lucky.

Diabetes has never been so interesting!

By Robert S.

Rage Bolus - a Christmas classic

Disney Pixar's Inside Out. One of my absolute favourite films.

I've seen a few things about rage boluses in recent months and it did that rare thing of making me think, "I should write a post about that".

I can't remember exactly when I first came across the term 'rage bolus', but I think it was quite soon after discovering of the power of peer support and shared experience. I am almost certain that it came from that most legengary of #DOC legends, Kerri Molone Sparling's Six Until Me, and I'm pretty sure that it was Kerri who came up with the phrase originally.

If you live with diabetes and use insulin, even if you've never heard it before, you will instantly know exactly what is meant by a rage bolus. It was phrase that made me go, "Aha! Yes!! I know that thing." Type 1 diabetes can be incredibly frustrating to live with. For all the illusion of 'diabetes maths', and there is no question that sometimes carb ratios and insulin sensitivity factors can and do work (some days / most of the time / once in a blue moon), it is also absolutely the case that there's a lot more going on than food + dose = reliable results. And when things go a bit off track you can feel that you have got it wrong (and sometimes you have!). A sense of personal failure. Feeling like an idiot. So frustrating. Other times you know that you have done all the things you are supposed to do (scrupulously counted carbs in a carefully chosen, healthy meal that you've eaten many times before with reliable results) and still your BG ends up in chaos. Doubly frustrating. Or you just decided to treat yourself (after all everyone else with their functioning pancreases and none of this to worry about were having a lovely time) and then you see it all coming back to slap you in the face, even though you tried your best to work it out. Triply frustrating.

Sometimes there are only so many small, carefully-calculated, properly-spaced correction doses you can try and wait grinding your teeth and stewing in double figures for hours (or days) willing your BGs to stop inexorably rising or stubbornly unmoved before you go OH FOR GOODNESS SAKE and whack in a big ole slosh of insulin to try to get things moving downwards.

And as we approach Christmas I am aware that we are heading into 'rage bolus' season. Meals are likely to be less predictable. Less easily guessed or measured. You may have a little sniffle, or be drinking sugary alcohol, be surrounded by endless nibbles, or be less active than usual, or exposed to any number of other factors that might make decent dose-guesswork much harder.

Let me just be perfectly clear about this - rage boluses are generally a terrible idea. They almost always result in hypoglycaemia, sometimes in a really nasty and stubborn and/or scary low. And crashing from one out of range BG to another at the other end of the scale is likely to make you feel even more frustrated, annoyed and difficult to live with.

So why do we do it to ourselves?

Because, frankly, sometimes it WORKS. And like an addicted gambler feeding endless coins into our BGs fixed-odds betting terminal we have reached the end of balanced and logical assessment of likely outcomes. Sometimes high BGs are the result of a significant underestimation of carbs. Or perhaps it's a dose that hasn't absorbed properly. There are circumstances where we are in 'insulin deficit' of a number of units. And where the food already eaten is still feeding glucose into the bloodstream, and where a dose isn't likely to reach maximum effect until an hour after you grit your teeth and go for it, there can be long, long hours between a measured, cautious correction dose and seeing any effect at all.

Repeatedly, I have heard respected diabetes clinicians suggest that one of the reasons that rage boluses are a bad idea is that taking more insulin doesn't make it act more quickly, it only makes you fall further in the end which leads to likely hypoglycaemia. I think it would be much easier to resist the rage bolus urge if this was actually true. The simple, demonstrable fact is that taking a larger BG correction does make it act faster to reduce high BGs. We know this because we see it happen. And to pretend that it doesn't really isn't going to help me in a consultation. If I take a 0.5u correction dose (as suggested by my pump or smart meter) then after a reasonably predictable onset time I will have a proportion of that 0.5u available to act on my errant BG. If I take a 5u correction, after the same onset time I will have much more circulating insulin available. It may not be exactly mathematically 10x as much, but it will be more. And If I've rage-bolused before and checked after 30 minutes, then an hour, an hour and a half... I will have seen this happen.

Rage boluses do reduce high BG faster.

It's just that they also add chaos onto more chaos.

Sometimes I will make this calculation in my head:

OK so I've currently got annoyingly high BG. I also have some insulin already on board. Along with that, I also have half a meal which I may (or may not) have hoplessly inaccurately estimated that is feeding more glucose in. Some of which will be accounted for by the dose that's already acting. Or possibly it won't. Solution? I'll dose a big ole slug of insulin in now to get things moving in the right direction over the next 2 hours, then depending on how things go I will eat some extra carbs later on to mop up the last bits of the dose.

I mean... what could possibly go wrong?

I once referred to this frustrated act-and-counteract ballet as uncertainty tennis (particularly where my guesses and second-guesses follow in double-quick time and everything overlaps far more quickly that it can possibly have had enough time to actually take effect).

Try to give yourself some head-space this Christmas. Give yourself a little more leeway. Perfection is an illusion. BG perfection doubly so. No one wants to live with a grumpy pancreas-impersonater muttering and grumbling after every meal.

And if possible try to resist the rage bolus urge. Except for the times when it works perfectly and brings you back neatly into mid-range. I mean... those are just awesome! (and incredibly unlikely)

CGM, diabetes time travel, and lessons learned from go-karting

Image by 'aurorasognatrice' used under cc.

2017 is hurtling to a close, and despite my giddy optimism about having 'loads of time' over the festive break to do all sorts of things that I don't generally get around to, the days have passed in a blur of hopelessly guestimated carbs, fun, friends, family and alcoholic excess. Consequently I am once again hastily cobbling together a round-up of the year type post - you lucky lot.

Almost exactly 12 months ago I was placing my order for a transmitter and first box of sensors for my MM640G insulin pump. I'd trialled the system over the summer of 2015, and I have always opted for Medtronic pumps with the vague notion of possibly, some day, self-funding CGM - but this was the first time our family finances had permitted it. I'd been using Freestyle Libre sensors intermittently for a few years (which you can use sporadically without the additional £500 for a transmitter), so I was interested to see how occasional SmartGuard coverage worked out for me.

In the end 2017 turns out to have been by far my most sensor-filled year. I was invited to trial Medtronic's Guardian Connect in April, and was unexpectedly and very generously gifted some short-dated sensors by someone who was switching systems and could no longer use them.

I always try to get the maximum use out of every self-funded sensor I insert, and I am fortunate to be able to restart almost all of them for at least another 6 days while retaining good performance. This almost halves the cost - or more accurately for me, doubles the sensor coverage. I had hoped to spread 10 'stretched' sensors (approx £500-worth) across the year to give me somewhat less than 50% coverage, but in the end, have been able to use them continually for quite a number of months which has been a very interesting contrast to my usual pancreas impersonation guesswork. It's interesting to reflect on the changes I've noticed myself making to day-to-day management decisions, and how it has felt as an experience. Here are a few basics:

• On the whole it has felt far easier to live with diabetes this year.
• I've not done any complex analysis of BG results, but my basic monthly spreadsheet analysis (nerd alert) shows significantly better results.
• My A1c has fallen by 7mmol/mol (0.5%) and my hypoglycaemia has dropped significantly
• Sustained reduction in hypoglycaemia has really improved the reliability and timing of my warning signs.
• For the most part I seem to be operating with around 80-85% of results in range (4-9mmol/L) - even over Christmas. This is ridiculous.
• On average I've only been getting 1-2% of results below 3.9mmol/L, nocturnal hypoglycaemia has been almost completely eradicated and I am having days and sometimes weeks at a time with all but no readings below 4.0.
• These are not results I can achieve without continuous data, not matter how hard I try.
• Even with the benefit of Freestyle Libre these are results I find it impossible to achieve. The alarms of full CGM provide me with significant added benefit, especially for catching lows.
• Occasionally life with CGM has been rage-inducingly frustrating, and alarms have sometimes driven me to distraction.
• I've had a few duff sensors and made some very poor choices based on inaccurate sensor data.
• Additionally, SmartGuard is a bit of a liability with an inaccurate or under-performing sensor, sometimes sending me into double figures with a cancelled basal (and sometimes half of a slowly-delivered bolus!) when I would have been fine if left well alone.
• SmartGuard is amazing for me, but very often I can't resist overruling it, ending it early and/or adding some carbs. Sometime this works better, sometimes I suspect I create more problems for myself than is strictly necessary 
• Additional data is a significant help to me day-to-day. I've come to rely on it and feel quite lost without it, but there are times when some of the subtle details of life with CGM have created their own challenges - which leads me to...

CGM and diabetes time travel
I've always been one for a thinly stretched analogy. I can't help myself. There are two coming up... You have been warned.

With absolutely no apologies for the shameless 'Christmas Dr Who' reference, I've also been thinking quite a lot this year about the diabetes time travel that you get involved in when tinkering with continuous data. I've considered this before in terms of the repeated half hours you can spend with diabetes waiting for various management decisions you have made to start working - periods of waiting which can seem interminable. With more time spent in CGM-land this year I've noticed additional time travelling shenanigans with the lag between 'sensor glucose' read via interstitial fluid and actual 'what's happening now' blood glucose information.

This was brought more keenly into focus with my brief dalliance with the faster-acting Fiasp. An insulin surrounded by feverish hype of very rapid action - which sadly for me rather failed to live up to expectations. But the promise of faster acting doses has occasionally made me feel the sluggishness of Novo-not-very-Rapid all the more keenly.

Mostly I find 'sensor lag' is barely noticeable, but with a whiff of irony, it is when my BG is on the low side and I'd really appreciate accurate information that this 'time travel' is most clearly noticed. Looking at a Libre or Enlite trace at those times, shows you what was happening something like 10 or 15 minutes ago. And any 'rapid' carbs you take to bring up those low levels, or turn-around a dip towards hypoglycaemia won't change your blood glucose for 10 or 15 minutes, and may not show on the eagerly-watched line for a further 10 or 15 minutes after that. More than enough time to double-treat, only to watch your levels climb into double figures a little while later.

In just the same way, when you have a trace to watch, there is a powerful urge to see a high-and-rising BG trace turn around. But correction doses for me are unlikely to show any noticeable effect before 60 minutes have passed (unless I add increased activity into the mix) - plus the mandatory 10-15 minutes, of course. And at each of these moments the graphed time-travel of results, and interminably upward direction of travel gives few clues as to when it is 'just about' to level, or begin to dive downwards. Threepio proudly suggests 'insulin on board' from which you might think I could make an educated guess (and sometimes I do luckily seem to drag some precious clues) but all too often I can find my IOB dwindling away to nothing, coping only with mis-guessed carbs, rather than the elevated BG I had hoped to squash. Other times I can bear it no longer and wade in with an additional dose, only to see my BG trace drop off a cliff and plunge downwards - awash with both insulin and various types of carbs. Which reminds me...

CGM and lessons learned from go-karting
I have only been go-karting three times I think. By which I mean the crash-helmeted-boiler-suited-whiff-of-2-stroke-engines style go-karting rather than the sliding-down-a-hill-in-a-fruit-box-with-pram-wheels-bolted-on style. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I'm absolutely terrible at it. I was reminded of my go-karting prowess when thinking about some of my... erm... more questionable diabetes decisions in response to a more frequent CGM data-feed. I suspect I am not the only one who has fallen foul of the double-dose and/or double-treat temptations - and for all the benefits of all that extra information, it is unmistakeably one of the risks.

The very first time I sat in a go kart, in a dimly lit, oily, industrial shed on the outskirts of our city, my driving style was essentially binary. The accelerator was either fully down or entirely untouched. The steering wheel locked at either edge or dead centre. Brakes were applied with sledgehammer-like gracelessness. As a result I kangarooed around the indoor circuit, making full use of the amply-supplied tyre walls and doughnuting my beleagured kart in furious circles. I proceeded at lightning speed from one collision to another and made very little effective progress around the twists and turns of the circuit.

This is pretty much the way I drive my diabetes when things are not going well. Frustrated by apparent lack of action of more reasonable measures I heftily over-correct with hugely inflated insulin doses or swigs of Lucozade. Lurching and stumbling from high to hypo and back again. Crash! Clonk! Screech! Everything becomes overblown and chaotic.

The second time I went karting was every bit as 'successful' as the first, but I had something of a lightbulb moment on the third occasion - which was at an outdoor circuit. For whatever reason, this time I adopted a more subtle approach. The accelerator was rapidly pressed full down at the start, then backed off in time for the first corner... rather than stamping the brakes I found myself making little feathered dabs. Steering was altogether more considered. Confidence grew. Speeds into tricky corners increased, a late firm braking followed by a hard turn of the wheel and full throttle at the mid-point of the turn allowed me to power-slide out of the corner. I was still making strong adjustments in some circumstances, but more often my choices were much more subtle, more measured.

This is what I see when my diabetes management is more successful. It is when I am able to make smaller adjustments that I do better. Multiple big overlapping doses and rapid-carb 'rescues' can leave me in a flat spin and going nowhere. Smaller tweaks, spaced further apart are often significantly more successful. I have found this to be a really interesting and important thing to think about when Threepio is merrily warbling away. Those alerts can seem equally frantic, but I need to pause and consider my position on the 'circuit' of my day. Can I just coast through this corner without stamping on the brakes (adding insulin) knowing that the turn of the wheel or dab on accelerator I've already made is enough, or is this the devious hairpin and do I need full-lock and firm braking before powering-on with additional carbs to make the turn.

In general terms, when I notice that I am oversteering and stamping on the brakes and accelerator of my diabetes managment, I am trying to remind myself to make a couple of slower laps and build up to speed again more gradually with more gentle adjustments.

Widening the access to continuous data?
I was delighted to be invited by Abbott to attend DxAmsterdam in July, and then in September the eagerly awaited news was released that Libre was to be placed on the NHS tariff and could theoretically be made available on prescription, subject to local CCG decision-making (and perhaos an emerging postcode lottery). Abbott's real-world data, shared in Amsterdam, backs up my own experience of access to continuous data - that the more information I have on which to base my guesswork, the better things tend to go for me.

Diabetes still has the capacity to be hugely annoying of course, but for me - more data certainly leads to better results. Continuous data is not without its challenges, and it will be vital for people living with diabetes to be given appropriate support and help in order to make best use of the information and avoid the pitfalls. Both in terms of their support from their clinic and also perhaps, those who have made the mistakes before them and can share their experiences. It will be really interesting to see what effect wider access to these technologies delivers as access to Freestyle Libre and CGM increases in the years to come.

It remains to be seen quite how much life my transmitter has left in it. They are warrantied for just 12 months. I will continue to use Enlite sensors for as long as I can, especially since my CCG seem rather reluctant to take any decisions on the finding of any kind of sensors for anyone - however great the need. I would imagine I would be very far down any list they eventually decided to draw up. After that I'm not sure if I will revert to Freestyle Libre, spring for another Guardian transmitter or take a continuous-data break.

Wishing you all a tip-top 2018. And thanks as always for reading.

Fiasp review, fun with 50:50, and the mystery of the missing insulin

I have been using NovoRapid for many of my 'pretending to be my pancreas' years. I had a brief dalliance with Humalog not long after we started writing this blog, but switched back to NovoRapid when I started with Artoo as my DSN had worries about accounts of Humalog crystallising in pump tubing.

One of the challenges with NovoRapid, as many users are keenly aware is that it's not very... well... rapid. NovoSluggish perhaps? NovoOhForGoodnessSakeGetAMoveOn!

When your blood glucose is stubbornly high and you dose a correction only to find it even higher an hour later it is very tempting to rage bolus it into submission with multiple additional units, only to find that you crash into low blood glucose hours later once they have all started acting together. I once wrote a post about speedboats and oil tankers outlining my frustrations around slow insulin action where everything else seems to act very fast indeed.

For those that don't know Fiasp (Faster Insulin Aspart) is the latest insulin from NovoNordisk. It is similar to NovoRapid, but has some additional ingredients that have improved the speed of onset. Official trial data shows a relatively modest improvement, but there has been much excitement in the DOC, and the early experiences shared seemed to suggest some people saw significant differences with faster action and a shorter duration.

I was keen to try Fiasp to see if I could do away with my reasonably lengthy pre-bolus at breakfast and lunch (taking insulin at least 30 minutes before beginning eating) and also to see if I could see improved/faster action of correction doses. This blog is my n=1 trial of 3 vials, I cannot say how Fiasp would work for you or anyone else, but this was what happened when I tried it.

But before we get started...
(jump to the Fiasp bit here if you're in a hurry, but you'll be missing out on some *sparkling* blogrambling)

The mystery of the missing insulin #1
When I spoke to my pump clinic about getting Fiasp they could not prescribe it because it was not yet on the hospital formulary. I had to get it from my GP who could use the PIP code to prescribe it directly. I planned to try it for 3-6 months to give me long enough to experiment with it and give it a decent go. I generally get 3 vials at a time when I order insulin. each u100 10ml insulin vial contains 1,000 units, which at my general Total Daily Dose of 30-35u should last me around a month each, more or less.

Except that they haven't.

Looking back, my insulin use has been pretty much as expected, but I used up those vials in 57 days not 90. And I am always careful to draw out every drop out of each vial, conscious of the huge privilege it is to live in a country where insulin is provided free for me by the NHS.

I had never realised before how much insulin prescribed to me goes unused. If I lived in the US with their absolutely horrendous price issues it would make a huge difference. Every set change for my insulin pump requires the tubing to be filled, and at the end of the site's life, that full tubing is discarded. I'm careful to only fill reservoirs with just enough insulin for their 3-day life, and have run them to all but empty more than once, but even then, there is a substantial measure of insulin left at the neck which you can't get to.

What this has showed me though, is that if planning a lengthy trip away, I would need at least a third more insulin than I might have guessed.

Oh and one more thing before we get going...

The mythical 50:50 split and other 'rules'

Immediately before switching - NovoRapid doing very well

I knew that changing the insulin I was using would most likely involve resetting a lot of things - ratios, factors and so on. So I decided (looking back this was probably not one of my brightest moments) that it would provide me with a useful opportunity to finally experiment with that mythical 50:50 split that some Healthcare Professionals seem quite keen on where exactly half your insulin is used for basal and half for meals. Along with the 500/100 'rules' that often get mentioned to me in clinic. I have always thought these 'rules' to be useful starting points - academically interesting, but no real substitute for systematic (and repeated) self-testing of basal insulin with fasting basal tests for example. Here was a chance to see how it worked for me.

So when I switched to Fiasp, I took an average of my Total Daily Dose (TDD) over the previous 30 days and split it exactly 50:50, then set a flat basal profile to spread that much insulin over the 24 hours. Apparently in most people with a functioning pancreas, the body uses half the insulin for food and half for background. Quite how they have worked this out is beyond me. And I've always thought, "Well surely, doesn't that depend on what you are eating??". But nevertheless the 50:50 thing still floats around and some HCPs raise eyebrows when your split is more 40% basal to 60% bolus as mine is.

Part of the reason why I half-thought this might be a useful experiment (apart from my own curiosity and thinly veiled desire to prove that it was nonsense and wouldn't work for me), was that I had read accounts by a few people who had tried Fiasp already that found it had a shorter action. By boosting my basal split to half of my TDD, I reasoned I might soften that out a little. Take less insulin with each meal, but still have some being fed-in continually in the background that I could dial down with a Temporary Basal Rate during exercise/activity.

Additionally I was wearing a CGM sensor during this period, and could watch what was going on, plus I had Smartguard to catch me overnight, just in case.

The first morning of my changing-absolutely-everything Fiasp trial showed a dramatic drop overnight - caught by Smartguard and low prevented, but enough to confirm my suspicions that a significant hike in overnight basal insulin would cause me problems going forward. Undeterred, and wanting to give the experiment more of a go I adjusted the pattern to shift some of the basal insulin into the daytime and keep the pattern at 50% of my TDD.

500 and 100 rules
The other half of my Great Big Reset experiment was to use the 500 and 100 'rules'. These are a suggestion of calculating your insulin:carbohydrate and correction factors using your TDD as a starting point:

1u of insulin covers: (500 / TDD) grams of carbohydrate
1u of insulin lowers BG by: (100 / TDD) mmol/L

The correction factor always works out very similar to the one I generally find works OK for me, but the meal ratio is always a bit of a surprise. More than once in clinic when the subject of hypoglycaemia has come up a calculator has been tapped and mentions made of what my ratio 'should be' according to the 500 rule - I often use 1:10 and 1:11, the 500 rule suggests 1:15. I've always been of the opinion that if my meal ratio were 50% out, I might have noticed, but this Brave New World was an opportunity to have a go and see what happened.

'500 Rule' boluses really struggling

After a couple of days I took stock. I had been experiencing a lot of high glucose alarms and had needed to dose several extra corrections to bring my levels back into range. Hilariously when I looked at the splits between basal and bolus I noticed that the extra corrections I had needed pushed me back almost exactly to 40:60 rather than 50:50. My diabetes can be extremely stubborn sometimes.

Additionally, I soon realised that the 500 'rule' was massively messing with my attempt to aim for 50:50. Even though I was using my TDD as a starting point, I simply do not eat enough carbohydrate most days for the 500 rule to generate half my TDD. I usually eat around 130-150g of carbohydrate per day. Don't get me wrong... I'm no sandal-wearing low carb evangelist. Sometimes I can eat 120g of carbs in a single meal - but on the whole, I find around 150g is all I need, and helps keep my BG a little more stable. The 500 rule seemed to assume I would be eating 250g of carbs a day. Which I can do, but carbier days are often the less predictable ones in my experience.

So I gradually began to tweak my basal profile and opted for more of a mid-point for meal ratios, and the experiment continued. I lasted around a week before I threw the towel in. I only hit the mythic 50:50 split on one or two days (about as many as I do using my own system to be honest). Most of the days with the 500-rule-ratios involved significant corrections due to rising levels, however quickly Fiasp may have been working. And more often than not these pushed my basal:bolus split back to where it normally sits.

Finally! The Fiasp part of the Fiasp Post
If you've waded through these ramblings so far (congratulations, some sort of perseverance medal is clearly in order) you will understand why I am choosing to pretty much ignore my first week's experience with Fiasp.

Looking back at that first week though, I will just briefly mention in passing that we were away on holiday and so there were a good few treats to test Fiasp's rapid action. I was also experimenting with not pre-bolusing for breakfast or lunch. Early results were promising once I had tweaked my ratios a little. Doses for other things, like white bread, ice cream, cake, beer did seem to be starting to act more rapidly, and where I'd misjudged things and was dosing for corrections they seemed to be starting to act within 25-30 minutes rather than my expected 60 minute wait with NovoRapid before I see much BG reduction.

I think it's fair to say that Fiasp had its work cut out because in the months before trying it, partly powered by the occasional CGM sensors I've been running this year, NovoRapid had been unusually cooperative. Many weeks with more than 80% of sensor readings in range and with almost no minutes below 4.0mmol/L.

Faster acting
After my slight false-start and once I had my ratios and basal back to more like where I would expect them to be I began to find my feet with Fiasp. During this period, here's what I found:

• I did still need to pre-bolus, but only about half as much. Perhaps 15-20 minutes at breakfast and 10-15 minutes at lunch. Much more than that and I risked dipping low before the carbs kicked-in.
• Corrections were acting faster, just as I hoped they would. This meant that my errors were resolved more quickly
• Meals where I would not normally need to pre-bolus and where I'd expect reasonable results from an 'all up front' approach I actually needed to delay the meal insulin. Setting all or part of it as a square wave/dual wave/combo
• Smartguard occasionally mangled these square and dual waves, cutting basal insulin and stopping the remaining bolus following a small dip in BG and just as the carbs began to hit, resulting in the dose only being delivered later on when I noticed what was happening. This was intensely frustrating.
• The insulin action did seem to be shorter than NovoRapid for me, or at least the way that Fiasp makes more of the dose available sooner meant that the tail was less pronounced and I reduced my duration of insulin action to better reflect 'insulin on board'
• Breakfast was my biggest challenge. Lower carb weekday ones (15-20g carbs) were relatively OK, but bigger weekend ones (45-50g carbs) were a nightmare. At some points in the year I can find I have to add an extra mini-bolus to account for my liver dumping glucose when I crawl out from under the duvet (even though my basal pattern always kicks-up at this time), but even that tried and tested strategy didn't keep me out of the teens after breakfast at the weekends. In the end I used a surprisingly strong bolus ratio that scaled the doses upwards where I was eating more.

Fiasp performing pretty well at 3-4 weeks in.

Finding the Fiasp sweet spot
There was definitely a point, when I'd been using Fiasp for about 3-4 weeks where I began to see distinct potential. There were still some horrendous numbers to be found, but there were some great successes too. For example, a Tapas meal out one Sunday with delicious breads, patatas bravas, beers and all sorts of incalcucables that was bolused late, in a series of guesses and to correct my earlier underestimates of carbiness where I could actively see Fiasp's faster action helping me out.

It was also at this time that my results around breakfast greatly improved, which helped a lot in improving my time-in-range.

What it made me realise, I suppose, was that after something like 15 years of using NovoRapid I had memorised a lot of 'exceptions to the rules'. Little tricks and strategies that I use, almost without thinking, to work around NR's particular activity profile and my individual BG response to different foods. When switching to Fiasp, I was needing to re-invent a lot of these, and discover a whole lot of new ones. If the switch was to become permanent, it would take time to build up this knowledge.

Things improving around breakfast time with Fiasp

Increasing resistance and the mystery of the missing insulin #2
Unfortunately my successes were fairly short-lived. I can see the Standard Deviation (how spread apart my BG results were) taking a leap upwards after about 10 days of beginning to feel I was making progress. During this phase of my Fiasp experiment my basal and bolus requirements seemed to be heading inexorably upwards once again (they had kicked upward after a couple of weeks, but I'd seen that happening to others and didn't stress about it too much). At the same time I was finding my earlier shorter pre-boluses less and less effective, and had more or less reverted to exactly the timings I would use with NovoRapid. Additionally, I no longer needed to dual or square wave those well known 'all up front' meals as I had in the first few weeks.

Even more perplexingly, rather than acting more rapidly, sometimes my corrections of high BG values seemed to have no effect at all. I would be watching a sensor trace waiting for a high or rising BG to be corrected and nothing would happen. I began to throw in 2u and 3u speculative 'turnaround' corrections to try to halt a rising BG only to see it continue to rise, and where I was expecting to have to mop-up the excess insulin with carbs later, the dose seemed largely to disappear entirely.

As an example, in the image you can see my BG rising after an early evening meal. The blue dots along the bottom represent corrections. The first, before 7pm was in response to an 'alert before high' which indicated I would be rising to 11mmol/L within 30 minutes. I gave a small correction (0.7u) which aimed to take the edge off the rising BG. Over an hour later, not only had the remainder of the meal bolus not reduced my BG, but the additional correction was not doing much either. By 8.20pm or so I was getting a little frustrated and bolused 3u planning to watch and wait -  mopping up with some tasty carbs once my BG had begun to drop. In the early days of Fiasp I would have expected even a modest correction to begin to lower BG within 30-45 minutes (unless immediately after eating), but over the next hour my BG continued to rise. The two corrections already on board almost doubling my meal dose. A further small correction at around 9.20pm did finally provide some BG lowering effect and I went to bed mid-range after a small snack. For anyone wondering about the condition of the infusion set - it returned to much more expected behaviour overnight and the following morning. But it was odd events such as this that rather cast a shadow on my Fiasp experiments. I began to opt for 3u and 2u over-corrections fairly often.

I was also increasingly aware of a stinging sensation at the infusion site. Not always, and sometimes stronger than others. But many infusion sites were noticeably tender to the touch.

Losing faith with Fiasp. Averages and SD rising.

Calling it a day
It was about this point where I decided that Fiasp was not going to work for me. I was nearing the end of the third vial of Fiasp and needed to put my repeat prescripton request in to restock. I decided to return to NovoRapid.

I am sure I could have made it work given enough time, but I was losing trust with it and finding it not altogether reliable or predictable. This was relatively manageable when I was wearing a CGM sensor to keep track of where doses were not behaving as expected, but I generally only use sensors occasionally and I really need an insulin that I can trust while I'm not able to watch it like a hawk.

Ultimately, I had wanted to try Fiasp to reduce or remove the need for pre-boluses, and to improve the speed of action of corrections. I had seen some evidence of these early on, but not for several weeks. And those positive attributes had apparently been replaced by a less than reliable action.

I am quite disappointed if I am honest. I continue to see lots of accounts of people getting on really well with Fiasp, enjoying lightning speed and seeing significantly improved post-meal numbers. I have also seen other accounts very similar to my experience though. So it seems that Fiasp may be an insulin that just does not work well for some people.

But for me - despite all its faults, NovoRapid has brought an immediate relief and return to significantly better results. Well... for the time being at least!

Running 10Km with Type 1 Diabetes

It's a few years since I did any running with much regularity, but inspired by raising money for a good cause, I found myself pulling on my trainers again in preparation for today's 10Km road race in Bristol.

If you are tempted to give running a go, there's a lot to be said for a 10K, it's long enough to provide a challenge, but short enough to remain fun, and the training runs themselves are relatively short and can fit in around a busy life. With great programmes like 'couch to 5k' you can gradually build up to running a reasonable distance from a completely blank sheet of paper - and once you are able to run 5Km repeatedly, you can leap to 10Km almost without really noticing - you just keep going at the same steady pace for a while longer.

Signing up to take part in an organised event gives your training some focus, and can help to motivate you as the time before the event reduces. There are also plenty of excellent training plans with runs and rest days that gradually build you up to 10Km and beyond. Despite my apparent grumpiness in the video I had a blast today. The field thinned out really quickly, and I was able to drop into a pace I was comfortable with very easily. There's always a brilliant atmosphere at these events and the route was lined with people cheering you on, samba drummers and live bands dotted around to lift the spirits. Even without that there is something special about running in a large group, and people often find they are swept along and encouraged into a slightly faster time than they might have achieved if plodding along on their own. Not that times are important, of course - it's more about just getting out there, having fun, and taking part.

Distance running with type 1 diabetes takes a little extra thought, but is relatively straightforward once you have worked out your system (which you can do during your training runs). For most people the main challenge is the possibility of hypoglycaemia caused by increased insulin sensitivity and glucose uptake of the muscles. I try to eat a reasonable amount of time before the run is due to start, and reduce my meal bolus a little - knocking off 10 or 20% usually helps. Eating a good while before starting running means that most of the bolus has finished working before the race starts. Being on an insulin pump, I am able to reduce my basal (background insulin) to only 20% of its normal level half an hour before the run starts and increase it to just under 'normal' perhaps an 80% TBR for a few hours afterwards. Some people find they need to take extra precautions for 24 hours or more as the exercise can make their normal doses overreach their needs a little. I was lucky enough to be able to wear a CGM during my run today, which was a great help in keeping an eye on things, but I have run longer distance races before with occasional fingersticks on the way around.

An extra motivation for people in taking on these challenges is often fund-raising, and I was really happy to be able to raise a little money to support 'Love Running' help both Syrian refugee children, and people in Bristol who are struggling with addiction, poverty, homelessness, and social exclusion. My fundraising page is still open for a week or two, and if you had a few quid to spare I'd really appreciate a donation, no matter how small. Make a donation.

Even more though, I hope you are encouraged to take the plunge and try adding a little activity into your life with T1. Whether through a big organised event like a 10k or half marathon, or something lower key like a 5k Park Run. Alternatively simply running, walking, swimming, hiking, dancing, climbing, a team sport, or whatever takes your fancy. With a little extra preparation there's no reason why type 1 diabetes should stop you.

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Your Diabetes May Vary (again!) - BG variation after food

Two different carbohydrates, yesterday. (CC)

Which would hit your bloodstream faster, a banana or a biscuit? Pure glucose or a slice of white bread?

Well, in news that will come as a bit of a shock to some (and not at all to others), you can't actually know without checking for yourself.

Anyone with diabetes who has spent much time monitoring blood glucose levels before and after meals (especially if they have then compared their results with anyone else), may well already be familiar with this conversation: Person A: "I find porridge is great in the morning, it releases really steadily until lunchtime"
Person B: "Really?!? I can't go near porridge - it hits me like a train. All breakfast cereal does. Which is odd really, because Mars bars cause me no BG problems at all" etc etc. Rinse. Repeat.

Well a recent study published in 'Cell' by the Weizmann Institute of Science has demonstrated once and for all what we pancreatically-challenged types have suspected for a long time. That blood glucose responses to different foods are infuriatingly and often bewilderingly individual.

The study took 800 people without diabetes, around 54% of them were overweight and 22% classified as obese (with a BMI of over 30 kg/m²). They were connected to a Continuous Glucose Monitor for a week at a time, but the CGM was 'blinded' so participants had no way of seeing what was happening to their levels. CGM consists of a small sensor placed under the skin which records interstitial glucose values every 5 minutes, 24 hours a day. These values generally lag behind true blood glucose values by 10 minutes or so, but give a complete picture of what is happening before and after food and during sleep. People in the study recorded their food intake, levels of activity and so on using a smartphone app. They followed their normal routine, and ate as they normally would with the exception of breakfast, where they were assigned one of 4 standardised meals containing 50g of carbohydrate.

If you have spent much time online, sharing experiences with people with diabetes you may get a nice warm fuzzy feeling of "Aha! I *knew* it!" at the results. Here are a few things that came out of the research that caught my eye:

Responses to different foods were highly individual. Many people's BG rose rapidly after a standardised glucose meal as you would expect, but others were relatively untroubled by pure glucose, while eating bread sent their BG levels through the roof.

A graph comparing two participants shows an almost exact inverse response between, for example, cookies and bananas. In the light of this, any lists of 'foods which release slowly' can only ever be viewed as a general guide. Your own response to any food could well be very different.

In general, people who had higher BG responses after eating carried more weight than those with lower responses. The paper doesn't offer any thoughts as to whether these higher BGs make people put on weight, or whether the excess weight causes the elevated post-meal BGs, but in either case this association did not just occur at the extreme ends, but as a continuous range across the various weights.

The highest post-meal responses 'significantly correlated' with elevated (but still non-diabetic) HbA1c, waking glucose level, BMI and also age - all known to be risk factors for developing Type 2 diabetes. It looks to me like these are people whose metabolisms are already beginning to struggle.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, post-meal responses were shown to be very different to the same foods if eaten after resting/sleeping vs after exercising. Apparently the Pope is also Catholic.

A 100 people took part in a further study which allowed the researchers to develop an algorithm that successfully predicted post-meal BG responses from a variety of clinical, physical and 'microbiome' (eg gut bacteria) factors. Personalised diets were then able to reduce post-meal BGs effectively. In the Diabetes Online Community we simply call this ‘eat to your meter’.

The scientists wonder if working directly on reducing post-meal BGs would, over time, reduce some of the other associated risk factors including reducing weight, HbA1c and lowering risk of fatty liver disease.

What do I think this means for me?
Well first of all, it helps me realise that it's not just me being 'weird' after all. Different people really do react differently to different foods. Sometimes in completely inexplicable ways. I spent almost 20 years eating things that had been recommended as 'slow release' before beginning to systematically test my own responses to foods and discovering a few surprises and several absolute shockers that I had always believed were 'pretty safe'.

In general, it is easy to see that the proportion of carbohydrate in a meal could have a fairly direct impact on post-meal BGs, but this research goes some way to explain many of those 'Huh??!?' moments, and demonstrates that there's a lot more to it than that for each individual.

People make a lot of noise over 'low carb' vs 'high carb', but in truth, those definitions are of little interest to me. What I'm after is a varied, enjoyable, sustainable, LOW BG SPIKE diet that suits *me*. This research encourages me to continue looking for it.

"Your Diabetes May Vary", and all that.

Possibly one of the most inexplicably stupid things I have ever done diabetes-wise

My blood glucose readings, yesterday.

Well... here's a thing. And I still can't actually quite believe that I did what I seem to have done.

The setup
Last night we had a smallish portion of spaghetti as our evening meal. This I realise for many would be a complete no-no, but pasta has typically not been the nightmare for me that it is for many. After little experimentation and tweaking I have managed to work out a reasonably successful strategy so it no longer fills me with dread - we eat it maybe once a month.

My approach (depending on recent results) usually involves a 2.5 hour dual/combo bolus at 60:40 for the calculated dose plus an extra 1u. Previously I'd also needed an extra unit up front too, but had dropped that about 9 months ago following some post-meal dips.

More recently my previously solid post-meal performance has been *slightly* marred by a smallish rise something like 4-5 hours after eating (when the majority of the bolus was waning) so yesterday I decided to rejig my approach a little since I have a Libre sensor in at the moment and can watch what's happening. So last night I went for the calculated dose+1u as 40:60 over 3.5 hours and added the extra unit up front and watched and waited.

Annoyingly I was starting from 8.3, but spaghetti often takes a while to get going for me so I wasn't unduly worried. Stayed pretty steady for the first hour then rose gradually by about 1.5mmol/L towards hour 2. Stupidly during this time I decided to confuse matters by bolusing and nibbling on some snacks that were circulating. By about 3hrs after eating I was 5.2 with vertical down arrows (and DW still chugging away) so I gulped some precautionary Lucozade. Headed off the hypo fine, but then my BG rose and flattened at 8.5-9.5 for an hour and a half (presumably spaghetti kicking in at this point). Then inexplicably at 4.5hrs post-prandial (10.30pm) I had another unexpected BG 'kick' up to something like 11.5 so, getting a little frustrated, I whacked in another unit despite considerable IOB (insulin on board). Sat and waited until midnight and the Libre trace was pretty flat in the 10s-11s - no sign of the 1u or IOB making any impact. Just after midnight I topped-up my IOB to make it the 2u I had intended to go to bed on to counteract the remaining spaghetti fallout.

Just to recap: Spaghetti is usually pretty predictable and not a problem. Added complication of snacking/bolusing/dose stacking/dipping/(over)treating *and* trying a new system all at the same time.

But we've STILL not got to the stupid thing...

The stupid thing
One of the great things about the Libre for me is the ability to see what's going on overnight. And also that if I happen to wake, even for a moment, I can scan and check levels in a way that I simply *do not* do if it requires me to fingerstick test.

I checked at 4am and had been pretty much flatlining around 9.5 since 1am. No insulin left on board. I consulted Artoo who suggested a correction of just over a unit, but I wanted to err on the side of caution so I went for a manual bolus of 0.9u (about two thirds of the recommendation).

I woke three hours later a little groggy and scanned for the Libre to read 'LO'. Artoo showed nearly 2 units of insulin on board.

Ehhhhh????

Checked downstairs via BG meter which confirmed BG was 2.2mmol/L. Bewildered and glugging Lucozade I tried to make sense of the situation...

Checking my bolus history I read that at 4am I had bolused not a cautious 0.9u, but 6.0u. Six units. SIX! My BGs had, not surprisingly, dropped off a cliff around 5.30am.

I simply cannot understand how I managed to do that. Even though one figure is very like an upside-down version of the other, I can't believe I could have made that error as all the buttons etc would be on the wrong side of my robot counterpart if I was holding the pump upside down.

But however it was that I managed to construct that error, there seems no denying that I did it.

And it's not one I'm wanting to repeat any time soon!

Half unit Lantus insulin pen free on prescription - at last!

Thanks to Twitter's @ColonelBlightly for use of the pic.

About bloomin time!

I had heard about this some months ago, but then promptly forgot about it.

In April 2014 Sanofi launched the JuniorStar, a 1-30u insulin pen that can be used with Lantus (glargine) insulin and delivers doses in 0.5u increments. Woooo hooooo!

During my least years on MDI, wrestling Lantus into submission was more or less a full-time hobby. My basal requirement changes frequently in response to a wide range of factors (differences in general activity levels, warmer/cooler weather, or more frequently... just because it feels like it). On pump these tweaks are easier to manange, but more than once on Lantus I would seem to find myself in a position where a change of a whole unit up or down was just a bit too much, and I would have to settle for a Hobson's choice dose. It was particularly frustrating because of the 'some units are more equal than others' weirdness that I frequently see when my basal insulin dose is just a little bit out. A unit too much or too little of Lantus over 24 hours could leave me scoffing a massive stack of carbs to stave off relentless lows, or chasing high BGs with units and units of extra rapid-acting insulin corrections.

Diabetes is biology, not maths - and we can't always expect the numbers involved to behave in a predictable, logical way. This will be news to none of you.

So HURRAH to the fine French pharma folks for finally stepping up to the plate and launching a 0.5u pen. Mysteriously though Sanofi are yet another pharma company to market a half unit pen with a 'Junior' mindset (NovoNordisk did the same with the NovoPen Echo). It is as if only children could possibly find a use for half-unit increments. I can only hope that adult patients will not have difficulty* in accessing this potentially very useful addition to their Diabetes Gubbins stockpile.

EDIT: *Due to the ridiculous immediacy of the flow of information in the Twit-o-sphere, having posted this just a few minutes ago someone has already pointed out that the JuniorStar can be obtained directly from Sanofi, without the need to jump through tortuous prescription hoops and bothering your surgery/clinic. Simply contact the Sanofi helpline. Thanks to @davidcragg for the tip :)

Uncertainty Tennis

I found myself playing 'uncertainty tennis' again earlier this week. Perhaps you don't call it that... 'paranoia ping-pong' maybe? Or possibly 'confusion Kerplunk'. On the other hand - perhaps it's just me... And no one else ever catches themselves doing this?

The game begins some time before it starts, usually at least a day before, often more. You make a treatment decision based on what we long-term pancreas impersonators hilariously think of as 'what normally works', except that, on that day, it doesn't. Undaunted, you take some more insulin and/or carbs that 'should sort this out'. Except that it doesn't either. Or the next thing. Or the next.

Now that the groundwork is in place, the game can begin in earnest. Evenings are my favourite time to play, since that is the time of day when I eat the widest variety of meals often with the highest carb load.

Play.

First serve the other day was a carefully carb counted plate of pasta. A meal I have often eaten without suffering undue BG chaos for many years (yes I know... odd isn't it). Bolus delivered and food eaten. 15 all.

An hour an a half later, since things have been a bit unreliable over the last couple of days I decide I should check post-meal just to see how things are going. BG well into double figures. Darn. And pasta has a reputation for being very slowly absorbed too! And I didn't even muck about with extended bolus, blah blah blah. 15-30.

Now I know that the meal dose is still chugging away. But I also know that I really shouldn't have shot up this much by now. Artoo thinks there is plenty of IOB (insulin on board), but from experience it seems that would only be the case if I'm 8 or 9 at this point, rather than 12-point-annoying. Override the advice and whack in another unit. 30 all.

Another hour passes and I come over all hungry. Hmmm. Best be on the safe side. Low 10's. Well OK. Not low then. Still quite a lot of IOB though. And I *did* override. Sit tight or do something else? Pasta will still be going strong right now, won't it? Will it? 40-30.

Then a stunning approach shot... 20 minutes later and for reasons I can never fully explain I pop in another .7u - Deuce.

The crowd gasp! I've stopped testing now and I'm playing on instinct...

Too much IOB now surely? 2 Fruit Pastilles.

Then a minute later another one.

Still don't want to test. Too many out of range numbers today and I just don't want to see another in either direction... It's like whatever action I've just taken immediately feels wrong so I have to counteract it before it has a chance to take any effect.

Third of a unit.

Swig of lucozade.

Biscuit.

Too much surely?! Half a unit. The crowd are in their feet... (I'm milking it for comic effect now).

Finally after several hours, I can resist it no longer. I check again. 5.whatever with umpty units IOB, plus the last few lots of feverish carb corrections and whatever pasta remains still ticking away. Not only that, but (based on which part of the last two day's numbers I consider to still be applying tonight) I could quite possibly expect to rise, or fall, OR stay perfectly level overnight.

So bedtime looms and I have to decide whether to take it to the tiebreaker and wait up for some (most?) of the IOB and/or onboard carbs to work their way out along with whatever I decide to guess at to mop up the remaining IOB.

Or I simply munch a little something, retire, and hope for the best!

I am fully aware that my evenings of 'uncertainty tennis' are largely my own doing. Without a CGM, and when things have shifted such that I have little confidence in what I think ought to happen with a dose or correction I find it all too easy to slip into a rapid rally of insulin and carb corrections.

It would be easier to resist if I hadn't had so many evenings when 'just leaving well alone' meant I spent 4 hours in double figures only to eventually correct with what I had thought of doing in the first place. That and the fact that I've played some amazing games in the past where I've aced a high or low BG into flatline submission with some audacious... erm... 'shots' (sorry!).

Strawberries and cream anyone?

Getting animated

I was remembering back to my heady art college days recently, particularly some early experiments with animation. Animators at the Disney studios developed 12 principles of diabetes animation in the 1930s, including anticipation, follow through, slow in/slow out and, of course, squash and stretch. All these seem to have an uncanny resemblence to how my blood glucose levels have been behaving.

From time to time (read more or less constantly) I seem to go through periods of change where I need tweak various doses, ratios and settings in order to get them to behave normally*, so that the dose and timing of insulin for a meal which worked perfectly last week might be expected to work again for the same meal this week - in the SAME way (craziness!).

* I realise, of course that this has no actual meaning in day-to-day diabetes management terms. But it is, nevertheless, a nice idea.

An obvious one might be during a period of illness. You expect your insulin requirements to increase at some point, to some unknown level... but it's very difficult to actually anticipate with any certainty what the change might be and when it might happen. Even with illness, some coughs and colds behave completely differently to others BG-wise. Some are all up front. And it's only later when the sore throat appears that you understand why you've been fighting double figures (200s for US readers) for days. Other times you can have all the symptoms of a stinking cold, but BG just potters along entirely unaffected. Then if you have needed to up all your basals and/or doses, you know that at some (again unknown) point in the future you will need to rein them all back in again or you'll be landed squarely in hypo-central.

Another favourite is a fall-off of gym visits during a school holidays. I'm just coming into that now - the girls break up for Easter today. As the rhythm of the house changes I find it all but impossible to get up and out early enough to get to the gym and still be able to start work on time. For the first week things often toddle along as normal, but then one day in week two BAM! It's as if my insulin has turned to water. So I try to make sensible, small changes to basals. Enough to have an effect, but not so much as to go too far the other way. The constant balancing act. This usually involves a frustrating few days of doing battle with double-digit readings, however careful I am being with food and carb counts.

More recently I have also noticed an unusual phenomenon which I will be watching with interest this time. In animation 'slow in/slow out', 'squash and stretch' and 'follow through' refer to a more realistic way of handling movement. Movement tends to begin gradually, then accelerate, then slow again into changes of direction. You can almost feel it in yourself as you move about. Squash and stretch and follow through relate to the way animated objects often appear more satisfying if there is a little elasticity added. Rather than just stopping hard at the end-point there's a little extra movement beyond it and then a bounce-back to rest.

This seems to be exactly what happens with my dose tweaks too. I battle with highs for days struggling to find the right level of increase. Then I find it and I get perhaps a day or two of good numbers. But then I seem to get a little 'bounce back' and have a day of low readings where I have to dial the adjustments back down again to counter. And then things settle. At least for a while... before we're off again.

I think it's important for Healthcare Professionals to understand the relentlessness of these daily adjustments when they peer rather disparagingly at a printout of ropey numbers. There is no 'right' set of ratios and correction factors, only 'right for now'. This darned condition doesn't stand still for a minute and all the time you are playing catchup you are logging results that are outside of what you'd like to see, not because you are not trying hard or putting the effort in, but just because the rules have changed. Again. If I get a settled week or two I count myself lucky. But I know that membership of #teamsmug is usually very short lived.

That's all folks!

Lantus 0.5 unit pen at last - Pendiq Intelligent Insulin Pen

Lantus 0.5 unit pen at last - Pendiq

I *love* the DOC.

No really.

I absolutely love, love, *love* the DOC.

Just a quick glance at Twitter and I can be cheered, encouraged, supported, made to laugh and occasionally brought to tears all at once. Other times you go looking for some lightweight wit and wisdom, or just to see what folks are up to and suddenly discover some weighty new piece of research, campaign to fight for or better still... everyone's favourite diabetes benefit an exciting-sounding new gadget.

Before Artoo became my constant companion a couple of years ago, I wrote quite a few posts about Lantus basal insulin. I spent quite a bit of time trying to wrestle Lantus into submission, and eventually we got to the stage where we muddled along bearably, but it's fair to say that one of my main motivators for starting pump therapy was to get 'proper' basal coverage, that accurately reflected the ebb and flow of my body's rhythms over a 24 hour period.

Comparing notes with other users it seems I was not the only person to be frustrated by Sanofi's rather less than enthusiastic approach to insulin delivery. Most of the injection pens that fitted Lantus were, frankly, nasty. And none of them offered doses in increments smaller than 1 unit. This might be OK if you are on higher doses, but many T1s are quite sensitive to insulin. I'm not quite sure how small children cope, for example. The minimum dose adjustment could well be a significant percentage of the total.

The other pen-related problem I had fixed around the same time related to my terrible memory. It may be hard to believe it you do not live with diabetes yourself, but after a few thousand injections they can become so automatic that you barely think about them. Sometimes you have absolutely no idea whether you have injected your dose or not. I changed bolus (mealtime) insulin to Humalog to get hold of a pen with a 'dose memory' the Humapen Memoir so that if I was ever unsure I had some means of checking that didn't involve me having to write something down, which I was just as likely to forget to do... Or possibly even to remember to write it down, but then forget the actual injection. See what I mean about my memory? Hopeless! Sadly the Humapen Memoir has since been taken off the market and it looks like its development has been abandoned. So now the only memory-enabled pen available on prescription in the UK is the NovoPen Echo.

But...

Thanks to a Twitter conversation I chanced upon earlier this week, I now know there is an alternative. And a very interesting alternative it looks to be too.

Enter Pendiq, the Intelligent Insulin Pen

Pendiq is a new breed of injection device from Germany initially launched in 2011 and relaunched in 2012. Such is the ruthless efficiency of German engineering that this pen boasts not just 0.5u accuracy but increments of 0.1u (from 0.5u upwards). Delivery is unlike any other pen I am aware of - dial up the dose on the display, press the button and a precision motor delivers the insulin at 2/u per second. The pen stores and displays around 2 months worth of injection doses and timings on an LCD screen and the website boasts all sorts of download opportunities and compatibility with logging software such as SiDiary. The battery is rechargeable and the device seems to be compatible with 'standard' insulin pen needles. The Pendiq is compatible with Lilly and Sanofi-Aventis insulins, which means that both Lantus and Humalog doses are now available on MDI in 0.1u dose increments. Heck you can even choose from five funky colours!

Unfortunately there is a snag. Isn't there always? It seems the Pendiq is not currently available on prescription in the UK. It looks like you can buy it via the website, but with the shipping/delivery it will set you back almost €185 (around £150). So not cheap... by any means. You would also probably be wise to speak to your DSN/hospital/clinic to get there guidance if you were tempted to spring for one before you part with any cash.

If you'd like more information, visit www.pendiq.com

Diabetes Week - Artificial Pancreas Project

It's Diabetes Week in the UK this week and after my rather forlorn post about the apparent disappearance of C8 medisensors non-invasive CGM last week I was pleased to read this little update on the Artificial Pancreas Project (APP) from Diabetes UK today.

It's still reasonably early days, and to my mind we are still quite a way off a 'real' management solution, but step by step people are cautiously being allowed to hand over the reins overnight to an automated system in their own home rather than under strict lab conditions with technicians standing by the bedside clutching Lucozade and NovoPens.

For those of you who have *no* idea what I am going on about, the Artificial Pancreas Project is seeking to 'close the loop' between two clever bits of diabetes kit. A Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) that can measure glucose levels and an insulin pump that can provide varying doses of insulin. In fact most people who happen to see my pump tend to assume that we are there already, and assume that a pump will just somehow 'know' how much insulin is needed and provide it automatically. Sadly it's not quite that easy, and while an insulin pump is a brilliant therapy option it does still require a fair amount of effort, guesswork and to be honest more than a little luck in balancing all of the hundreds of variables involved in day-to-day BG tomfoolery.

Part of the problem with the APP of course is that the technologies involved are improving, but still rather less than perfect. Continuous Glucose Monitors make an estimate of blood glucose levels based on glucose concentration in interstitial fluid (the stuff sloshing around between cells in tissue). This tends to lag a bit behind actual BG values, and those lucky enough to have access to CGM will know that what you are really getting is 'trend' information rather than the accuracy* of blood-based fingersticks. CGM manuals/marketing are usually pretty clear that any doses/corrections made should be done after confirming results with a fingerstick test. But the closed loop system needs to use this very same stream of trend information in order to make dosing decisions.

Currently the human trials of the APP are showing relatively promising results for looking after things overnight. To know that you had a smart system carefully tweaking your levels while you slumbered would be fantastic, but of course a full Artificial Pancreas would have to go much further and tackle the thorny issue of mealtimes. Personally I think we are a looooong way off that. For one thing current 'rapid' analogue insulins are hopelessly inadequate for the task. They take far too long to get going (1 hour for corrections to start taking effect anyone?) and act over far too long a time period to give a bunch of electronics, however smart, the ability to take over entirely.

What I would hope for instead is a commercially viable 'smart pump' which combines much of the effort and user knowledge/experience that currently goes into effective pump use, but with automated AP trickery to take the edges off the errors and irritations of daily pancreas impersonation. A system whereby you would bolus for meals, set TBRs for activity and generally do the basics, but the pump would be constantly monitoring how things were going and have the ability to tweak things and make corrections to keep things on a more even keel.

Now that really would be something.




* It should be noted, of course, that fingerstick BG tests in themselves are not particularly accurate and only really serve as a general guide as to what is going on.