Facebooking my diabetes for #WDD2016

Monday this week was World Diabetes Day. It's is one of those made-up things that come around every year and hope to raise awareness of something or other - World Sparrow Day... International Day of Happiness... World Toilet Day... One of my own favourites is 'International Talk Like A Pirate Day', but I digress... Aaaaarrrrrrrrr!

World Diabetes Day is held every year on November 14th, good ole Freddie Banting's birthday (one of the guys who was instrumental in the discovery of extracting and using insulin in diabetes treatment). It was nice to see a WDD themed Google Doodle make an appearance, something that us pancreas-impersonators have been asking for for many years.

A few years ago, inspired by something I saw on Twitter from Scott Hanselman, I decided to document a day's-worth of diabetes interactions on Facebook as they happened. People seemed surprisingly interested, and so having given them a few year's respite I thought it was time to Facebook my diabetes again. Here's how it went...

06:22 
Slightly early start to the day but the routine is the same. First thing, even before kettle goes on is to check blood glucose level. Make small hole in finger, squeeze out drop of blood and apply to test strip. Result: 8.3. Ideally this would be between 5.0 and 7.0. Give insulin for breakfast. Estimate single slice of toast as 15g of carbohydrate (12g for the bread, 3g for a dab of marmalade). Insulin pump suggests 1.3 units of insulin for the carbs, plus 0.6u to correct the slightly high BG level. In addition I also need an extra 1u for my liver releasing extra glucose when I get up (part of the body's Circadian Rhythm). Dose delivered I will now wait at least 30 minutes to eat breakfast.

Via comments:
Regarding the carb value of bread: I deliberately choose Burgen 'soya and linseed' as it is a) tasty b) slightly lower carb and c) relatively low GI

Regarding waking BG level: The official guidelines are 5-7, I think. The 7 is to give some wiggle room for a rise after eating. Usually pre-meal guides are 4-7, but at breakfast they make it 5, because regularly waking in the 4s is associated with increased risk of undetected nocturnal hypoglycaemia which can be a real problem. 

06:50
Check pump display to remind me when I had dosed for breakfast. I have been waiting 30 minutes to eat for so long I often instinctively get this right. I thought to check at about 28 minutes today which is about perfect. I need to leave a gap between dose and food because the 'rapid acting' insulin I use is not actually very rapid. I cannot afford getting distracted though as if I wait too long the insulin could start working before the food kicks-in and my BG levels could drop too far. It's a balancing act! 

07:17
Breakfast of champions. I have tried many things over the years but this seeded bread is fairly reliable for me (everyone's reaction to different foods is frustratingly and confusingly different). It has slightly fewer carbs than regular bread - 12g per slice vs the more usual 18g - and the seeds help to slow absorption. It is anything with carbohydrate that raises blood glucose levels, not just sweet things, so that's bread, rice, pasta, most fruit, anything made with flour, grains, root veg, and then all the sweet and sugary things too. My task is to match the carbohydrate I eat with doses of insulin. And then to match the speed of absorption of the food with the timings of the doses. I cannot hope to get that right all the time. But the lingering threat is that if I get that wrong too often I am at risk of blindness, heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, limb amputation (high levels) or unconsciousness, coma or death (low levels). Fun eh! Over the past 25 years I have spent more time thinking about the potentially disastrous outcomes of my efforts to manage my diabetes than is probably good for a person's mental health. 

07:57
Time to take this moppet out for a walk. Activity and exercise need more fuel than resting and tend to make insulin work more dramatically, so I need to allow for that, even when it's something as insignificant as a 35 minute wander. My insulin pump allows me to reduce my 'background' insulin level, so I am setting a 70% Temporary Basal Rate for 45 minutes. 

08:52
Back from dog walk, just checking to see how things are going. 11.5mmol/L. This is too high, it looks as though I could have done without the TBR I set (though tomorrow might yield different results even if I do exactly the same things). Ideally this should be no higher than 9mmol/L 2 hours after eating so I am adding .7u of insulin with the aim of getting me back to 9 and leaving the insulin already 'on board' to deal with breakfast as it continues to digest. 

09:14
It's 9:14 and I realise I have already forgotten to mention something. I had a shower, so I disconnected my insulin pump temporarily, capped the tubing and the cannula that is inserted, currently, on my back. After the shower I primed the tubing and reconnected. So many of these interactions are so automatic I barely even notice them any more. 

10:02 
WDD Update: (It's RELENTLESS isn't it?) 10am and feeling a little bit indigestion-y / dry-throated. This *might* be connected with my raised blood glucose levels, but my symptoms of high BGs are patchy to say the least. It is probably because I have just been thinking about it since breakfast and it's all in my head. Or maybe it isn't? Tempted to check my blood glucose level again, but the thought of another finger prick so soon after the others (and especially because I think it will be another high level) is not encouraging me. 

I am also feeling a bit hungry, but adding the complexity of something carby at this stage will just create even more confusion/uncertainty so I am having a handful of nuts and a cup of tea instead. It's not that I *can't* have a couple of biscuits - it's just that the mental effort, and potentially disastrous BG outcomes kinda drains the joy out of them.

Via comments
Regarding feeling hungry when BG is high: I think it's because you body knows you have fuel on board, but it also knows that the energy is trapped in the blood and not making it into the cells. So it asks for more fuel. Which potentially makes the problem worse. Which makes you hungrier. Rinse. Repeat...

The really REALLY irritating thing for me is that my clearest symptom of low blood glucose is ALSO 'feeling a bit hungry'. So every time I feel a bit hungry I have to work out whether my BG is too high because of what I've just eaten, too low because I've over-compensated or, perhaps, that I might be just 'a bit hungry'. Pah! 

10:40
My Twitter feed is ablaze with #wddchat16 today. A 24-hour curated international Twitter conversation with different countries hosting an hour and handing over to each other. Thousands and thousands of people connecting, sharing experiences and supporting each other. I find great support to help me manage my T1 by connecting with people online, but I am going to have to resist getting involved on Twitter today or I am *never* going to get anything done! 

12:30
Lunchtime beckons. As you can see, the carefully considered correction doses I have administered today have had absolutely no effect, even though all of those doses have now finished working (approx 4 hours). I am beginning to feel the sluggishness of high BGs emerge. Lunch is a 2 slice Burgen bread sandwich and an apple*. 25g carbs for the sarnie and allow 20g carbs for the apple, so 45g total. My lunch ratio is 1 unit of insulin for 11g carbs. Thankfully my pump can do the maths for me, along with calculating a correction based on 1u lowering my BG by 3.5mmol/L and the difference between my current BG and my ideal mid-range target. Confused yet? Dose for lunch is 4u, plus another 1.5u correction for the high BG. I will wait rather longer to eat this time, with the intention of being more in range before adding more carbs. A tricky timing challenge as the longer I leave it the more steeply dipping my BGs will be when I eat, and the food will take a while to get going itself. It can feel like trying to hit a perfectly weighted long-ball pass to a sprinting striker... in the rain... into a headwind. 

* I tend to eat the same things for breakfast and lunch week in, week out. Partly habit, but mostly to reduce the number of variables by sticking to things that have been 'fairly reliable' (Ha!) in the past. That way if results are not as expected I can discount carb-estimation and food-absorption-speed errors, and it becomes more likely that my insulin needs have changed again.

12:46
How long has that been? Ah. OK, my instinctive 30 minute recheck. Will leave it a while and BG check again.

Via comments
It must be exhausting being you: The thing is... I recognise how amazingly lucky I am to *only* have T1D to live with. And to live with it in the UK with access to insulin, tech and the unbelievably amazing NHS. If I'd been given a list of LTCs to pick from aged 21, it would have been a pretty good option.

13:12
Just checked again. #BGnow of 9.3 after a full hour. Not perfect, but it will have to do. If I don't eat now I'm likely to get too absorbed in what I'm doing and forget.

15:42
This is getting a bit annoying now. Walked to Coop without TBR as things have been running high and I'm still too high on return. If things were working I would already be back in range. Correcting with a further 2.5u. Pump recommended 0.7u as I still have 0.7u 'insulin on board' from lunchtime. Initially thought about 1.5u, but have added another unit. Essentially I am now dosing what I think is 'slightly too much' because 'enough' isn't doing anything. I will need to keep an eye on it towards eve meal time. Starting to feel a bit crabby/irritable.

Via comments
Could raised BGs be an issue with the infusion site? Good thought, Not sure though... Would expect a much more dramatic rise with a cannula fail rather than being held steady through subsequent meals. This just feels like walking the wrong way on a travelator. Have been expecting my basals/ratios to shift soon. Looks like this could be it?

Could it be degraded insulin, having got too warm?  No it's quite a fresh one. I will take a look at tomorrow's results and see whether it's a pattern or 'one of those days'

17:43
Yay! My first in-range result of the day. Must remember to change my insulin pump battery before I go out for the evening. Last thing I need is Threepio wailing away when I'm trying to play guitar.

17:56
Just prepping for evening meal. Here's my insulin pump working up the mathematics for the dose. Feel very lucky to have access to tech which can fine tune doses like this. And if I decide I want to up my insulin intake by 10% tomorrow I can adjust the settings and let it work out the new ones. My diabetes may not behave reliably/predictably, but at least I can wrestle it with some precision on one side of the equation!

19:54
Typical, just when you can't watch what is going on and just when you really don't want to dip low. Several handfuls of Skittles to the rescue. Don't want to repeat the brain-fog for the next lot of songs.

Via comments
Regarding hypo warning signs: The ones that sneak up on me at that level really scare me. I tend to get good signals at least between 3.5 and 3, this time I had lack of coordination and slight sweating as clues. Didn't get my more usual anxiety/hunger until on the way back up.

21:42
That's the thing about T1 diabetes. You really can't rely on it to behave consistently. Just when you have been running high all day, and without rage-bolusing for a meal you get an unexpected dip. I suspect a slight mis-estimate of carbs for my evening meal, and not quite enough of an insulin delay for noodles (some carbs take longer to hit my system and an insulin pump allows me to deliver the dose either fully or partially spread over a number of hours). Still surprised the handful of extra fast carbs I ate as a 'safety cushion' disappeared so completely. 

22:02
Another check, and as I half expected I slightly over-did the hypo correction. Always tricky treating a hypo when you have insulin active, and when you don't want to risk a double-dip. I added a 30 minute 0% temporary basal rate just in case. Looks like a few Skittles too many. Another correction delivered. Not my best day of BG control. But not my worst either!

23:36
This is the last of my posts as part of World Diabetes Day. I waited up to allow that last correction to settle in. 

In Sesame Street style, today has been brought to you by 9 blood glucose checks, 110g of carbs, 29.475 units of insulin (40% background, 60% meal/correction). Just an average day with T1D (with above average BG levels). 

Now wake up tomorrow and do it all over again. And the next day. And the next. And the next...

 

Appointments, priorities and the importance of buy-in

Well this is a bit unexpected - but I have been going through a bit of a weird patch over the last 8 weeks or so, and even though it's not one of the posts I have been struggling to get written for some time - I have decided to leapfrog this post ahead of the others and get it written while I it is still fresh in my mind.

Some ground rules before I start - I will try to keep the moaning to a minimum. Please bear in mind throughout that I really like my clinic, and value the opinion of the DSNs, Consultants and Registrars I see there. However, with something as complex, fickle and infuriating as type 1 diabetes, there will inevitably be some occasional differences in priorities, and sometimes this can lead to what we might call less-than-fun times. I believe it is crucial that any changes suggested in a clinic get genuine buy-in from the person with diabetes. And any previous negative experience of the suggested strategies needs to be given careful consideration.

To summarise 'life with diabetes' so far - I have always preferred to run on the low side than on the high side. Oddly enough the idea of dying with my feet still attached, functioning kidneys and still being able to see, rather appeals to me. Anyone who has read these witterings before will know that I have fought long and hard to reduce my exposure to hypoglycaemia, particularly Severe Hypos, with some success - I have not experienced severe hypoglycaemia for over 5 years now I think. What lows I still have are irritating, generally short lived and in the 3s. With a more serious couple in the 2s each month. But I do have more than I'd like. And I keep tabs on how many I am having each week/month to clamp on them if I start having more. The darkest shadow on my shoulder remains hypoglycaemia at night. Perhaps twice or three times a month I might drift below 4 and (according to Libre sensors) can stay there for several hours. This is a problem for me. It is a problem that the MM640G with sensors had pretty much entirely solved, but sadly that still remains out of my reach as a therapy option.

You may recall I wrote about a less than ideal appointment last Autumn. I confess I did not arrive at that appointment in the best of moods. As you will find, this is becoming something of a regrettable habit. Following that appointment, and full of all the encouragement that 'You are going to die of cardiac arrythmia' predictions will bring, I decided to tackle my lingering hypos more aggresively, particularly the overnight ones. I took more intense precautions in many more situations than I would have 'normally' done. Unfortunately, what I observed in my logs is that those lows are perilously hard to predict. I would take precautions using all my experience and judgement only to see my levels soar up into the teens overnight. Meanwhile I was still caught off-guard by lows when I least expected them. Nights with no obvious precipitating cause saw me wake up in the 3s. I kept it up for a good two or three weeks until I had got frustrated enough to stop. The percentage of lows per month was almost unchanged but my averages and variation went up markedly. I felt worse. I felt less on top of things. I went back to my 'normal' way.

But.

Of course, now I had let the cat out of the bag. In requesting access to sensors I had flagged up my problem to my clinic - and now they were worried about me. So I was called in for a more rapid three month follow-up appointment to see how I was getting on. Delayed by a couple of Junior Doctor strikes I actually went to my follow-up appointment on 13th April. We discussed the issues I had been having and their suggestion was blindingly simple - to take less insulin. I recounted my experience of trying to tackle these very overnight lows and how elusive they had been to tie down. That my attempts had made little difference to my monthly percentage of readings below 4, but had resulted in a significantly raised BG average, greater variation in results and raised HbA1c. Their opinion was that I had plenty of wiggle room in my A1c, which was (at that appointment) 6.7% - My opinion was more that the raised A1c and no significant reduction in the issue itself was less than satisfactory.

I wondered how high my A1c would have to be to prevent hypoglycaemia altogether (which appears to be their preferred scenario). Raising it by 11mmol/mol (1% in 'old' numbers) had done nothing - so how high would I have to go 8%? 9%? Oh no!!! not that high! Nowhere near... And yet I could not get past the thought that on the days when these overnight lows happen, I appear to need very little insulin overnight - to apply that approach to the other 28 or so nights in a month would inevitably result in consistently elevated BG levels.

I was given two options - to leave things as they were, or to try a small reduction overnight to see if it would help. They were persistent. Reluctantly I agreed. I suggested that simply dropping my basal pattern down one 'notch' would do nothing on those troublesome nights - if it was going to do anything it would have to be at least two notches (0.05u/hour).

My intention was to 'do it their way' for the next 6 months, and then go back for my next review.

The first night.

The problem
But herein lies the problem. I was reluctantly agreeing. I had tried this before and it had failed. I was not expecting it to work. In fact part of me was expecting it to fail. Perhaps even wanting it to fail? This was a problem I wanted to fix - but this did not feel like the right way to go about it. And the insistence that it was fine for my levels to be higher and my A1c to go up 'a bit' was not an encouragement - it felt like a separation between our priorities. To be clear, I know why they were suggesting it to me - from the outside it is almost something I can see myself recommending to someone else on a forum. I hate having these overnight lows. I want to be able to prevent them. But not at the cost of 90% of my overnight readings. I guess I felt trapped. Like I was doing something against my better judgement.

It probably didn't help that the first night did not exactly go brilliantly. 5.3mmol/L to 12.7mmol/L, and then a dip below 4 after lunch. A tried and tested lunch that I have eaten literally hundreds of times before. But I had decided to do it their way. So I continued.

And I am glad that I did. Because the second night showed a much lower rise. And two or three days later I *may* have dodged one overnight low because rather than a small (or very significant) rise in BG overnight I actually stayed almost level and woke at 5.5mmol/L.

I wish I could leave it there, with the problem more or less solved. But unfortunately that is not how it worked out.

Owning your own targets
I have talked before about the importance of owning your own targets - whatever you decide them to be. And here I was - trying to run my diabetes someone else's way. For all the right reasons, but following a plan of action that did not feel my own. Resisting my own management instincts to try to do it someone else's way. Watching my daily averages and glucose variation rise. Still experiencing a very similar number of low-level dips under 4.

And the more days that passed, the more the weight of running my diabetes against my instincts pressed down around me. As days turned to weeks any small early victories began to be swallowed by my rising, uncorrected, daily averages.

Type 1 diabetes is a grind. Type 1 diabetes is frustrating. Daily management can involve making hundreds of small interconnected decisions. And my aim is usually to attempt to get my BG levels to approximately mid-range by 3 or 4 hours after eating. Except now, I was aiming to avoid hypoglycaemia at all costs (not actually part of the original decision, but more reflective of multiple conversations over a number of years). So I was letting high BGs run. Sometimes all day. And still the lows peppered my results. Marginally less frequently perhaps... but adding insult to injury. Frustration grew. My mood darkened.

All in the mind?
After three or four weeks I knew I was struggling. But I had decided to run things their way for six months so I gritted my teeth and tried to carry on.

This was a mistake.

Way back in my diabetes dark-ages, there was a time where I would only test a couple of times every few days. It was not unheard of for Jane to ask me to test if I was behaving in an unsually grumpy, frustrated or short-tempered way. More often than not it transpired that I was running high. I find high BGs frustrating anyway, in that they usually suggest some sort of miscalculation on my part - but it seems that there may also be some physiological association for me between high BG levels and low mood, frustration, anger, dispair and feelings of helplessness.

Six weeks after my appointment I had reached the point where I was beginning to behave more erratically in response to my elevated BGs. I was either rage bolusing (significantly over-correcting out of sheer frustration) or rage snacking (eating rapid acting carbs without insulin in response to a moderately high BG - if I was going to be high, I might as well have 'earned' it). I was noticeably more angry and frustrated - it was beginning to impact on the family. I came to a point where I had to regain some balance.

And so I have switched back to doing things 'my way'. I'm not sure how much of this story I will share when I return to clinic in 3 months or so, as I really do not think they did anything particularly wrong. This post is more a question of me facing my own demons really, and how my reluctantly handing-over some of the control I had fought so hard to wrestle back from my diabetes, resulted in a spiral downwards towards disengagement and depression.

What have I learned?

• Owning your targets is crucial. T1D is too frustrating to try to play to someone else's rules.
• Where I recognise there are problems to address - I need to do it with strategies I actually believe have a chance of succeeding.
• That reducing basal insulin such that I get a slight rise overnight is not a disaster and may, very occasionally dodge a period of low BG overnight.
• That there are useful lessons I can learn from the first two weeks of the experiment which I can try to apply to my own self-management framework.
• That agreeing to do something in order to demonstrate that it doesn't work is a very silly idea when it comes to T1 self-management.
• That I need to be careful about my psychological and emotional state during periods of elevated blood glucose.
• It's your diabetes - trust your instincts.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

64 Days with the Medtronic 640G: Ep 3 What is SmartGuard?

Here's another little update on my time with the Medtronic MiniMed 640G. This time it's a look at what SmartGuard is and how it works. When someone first tried to explain how SmartGuard worked to me I can remember it felt bewilderingly complicated, with all sorts of levels and numbers flying around. Actually once you have got your head around it, I have found it relatively simple - so I'm trying to explain it here with a little animated diagram that tries to work through an example of how and when Smartguard is activated, and what it does.

It should be remembered, of course, that for all it's magic, SmartGuard is not supposed to replace hypo-treatment entirely. Unfortunately for all the over-enthusiastic media hype about the 'Artificial Pancreas' when the MM640G launched, we are nothing like there yet. SmartGuard is a useful step in the right direction, but a full AP it ain't. For starters, there are many situations in which stopping your basal insulin will simply not act quickly enough, or have enough impact, to head off an impending low. And there are other situations where SmartGuard might be triggered for all the right reasons, but not actually have been needed and you end up higher than you'd like because of it.

I'll cover some of those situations in more detail in another blog - but for now, let's focus on those gentle (or not so gentle) drifts below 4.0 which SmartGuard effortlessly squashes without bothering you with any irritating alarms.

When it works well, it genuinely feels like you have a little 'diabetes helper' by your side, actively looking out for you. Not something I have ever felt about any other piece of diabetes technology.

If you have any questions or comments, please do leave them below. I'd love to hear what you think.


Watch this a little larger on my YouTube channel.

Face-off: MDI vs Pump

If you've not seen this film before, you should! Face/Off [DVD] [1997]

A couple of people who are considering going on an insulin pump were asking how I was getting on, how I was finding it and whether I thought it had made any difference.

An interesting question a little over 6 months into the experience.

Pump win(?): Fear of attachment
The first thing to say is that the nagging worries I still had about attachment when I wrote a few weeks after starting on a pump have long gone. I know some people feel at one with their robot pancreas almost immediately, but it took me a good few months before I reached the stage where I rarely thought about being hooked up to Artoo, and even when I did, it didn't worry me. Things like getting changed, where the sense of inconvenience lingered, no longer strike me as irritating. If you have just started on a pump, and the attachment still frustrates you, hang in there. Not everyone gets used to it in a few days. Allow yourself time to adapt to the new 'normal'. Wearing and using Artoo is now second nature. No problem with sleeping either.

Hugely unexpected pump win: Attachment
I think this bears repeating from my '2 month' post, partly because it was something I really didn't see coming. There have been many times since starting on a pump that being attached to Artoo 24/7 has given me back a feeling of spontaneity. Do you remember spontaneity? I'd pretty much forgotten about it myself too. That ability to just stop and have lunch there because you fancy it, rather than having to go back home because you weren't expecting to be out that long and didn't bring your kit. There have also been *no* times since November when we've had to stop the car at the end of the street, and run back to fetch my pencil case.

Pump win: Basal patterns
A properly flexible basal pattern was one of my main motivations to switch to a pump. Looking back, while on MDI my early morning 'fasting' reading of the day was more erratic than I realised at the time. Sometimes too high, sometimes too low. Only in a decent range say, between 3.9mmol/L (70mg/dl) and 7.5 (135), less than half the time (45% to be exact). Truth be known it's still wobblier than I'd like, but these days I get a decent first reading on two out of three days. That's a much cheerier start to the day for everyone at the breakfast table.

Pump win: Delivery options
I was invited to an evening arranged by Medtronic in March where pumps and pump therapy were discussed. It surprised me how many people had been on a pump for years but had never tried out different bolus patterns or temporary basal rates. If you are new to a pump I'd encourage you to get stuck in straight away. TBRs, dual and square wave boluses have more than lived up to my expectations. Many situations, like gardening and vacuuming which refused to play nicely for me on MDI have been more or less tamed by Artoo. I don't get it right all the time, but have a little 'cheat sheet' of notes for what seemed to work before to use as a basis for whatever I'm doing and I have avoided many many spikes and/or hypos since November.

MDI win: Infusion site failures
On the plus side set changes have become much easier and more automatic. They are a little more time consuming than a simple injection, but you do know roughly when they are due and can bring that forward/push that back slightly if it would come at an inconvenient time. The whole push-button dosing thing is so much quicker and easier than faffing about with a pen that my feeling is that I have a net gain of time spent/inconvenience endured dealing with diabetic rigmarole.

But. (and it's a biggie)...

I have had sites go wrong already. I still watch every set change carefully to make sure they have 'taken' properly. I had almost stopped being so paranoid, but two or three failures in quick succession have put me on my guard again. At least two cannulas have kinked on or after insertion so that insulin wasn't being infused properly. Not serious enough to get a 'low delivery' warning, but enough to cause a rise in BG levels. I had another site seemed to 'go off' at about 1.5 days. It had been fine, but suddenly stopped working as expected. I am putting these down to site issues because corrections did not behave properly, but as soon as the site was changed I was back on an even keel. I've also caught a big fat bubble in the tubing on at least two occasions when I've put Artoo back on after a shower/gym session - which makes me wonder if some odd but short lived rises in BG might be down to Artoo delivering 'bubble' rather than basal for an hour or two on other days. I check carefully every time I fill a reservoir and flick and fiddle until I am as sure as I can be that I have got all the bubbles out, but nevertheless I can still sometimes see a bubble in the reservoir at the next set change. These are not problems that you ever have with MDI. Even if you hit a dodgy site that is only going to be one out of the day's several injections. With Artoo all my eggs are in one basket. And sometimes the handle falls off the basket. I have had one-off levels on a pump higher than I've had for years on MDI, perhaps the highest since I was first diagnosed. And I've also tested positive for ketones since November - again not something I am used to. In all I've probably had to swap out maybe six sites since November. As a percentage of the total number of insertions it's not disastrous. but it's not ideal either.

MDI win: Injection site availability
Another part of this is the available site locations. I was never very adventurous on MDI, but I had far more area to play with in terms of a quick injection than is suitable to have something fixed to it for several days. I'm currently using sides and back for sites to give my abdomen a rest but have to be careful to find a spot with enough 'flesh' and some places end up being slightly uncomfortable when you lean on them/sit on them/risk getting them knocked out by waistband. In theory I could use my thighs, but there's not a lot of 'spare covering' there and most of the usable area seems to be right underneath my jeans pockets which I'm forever fishing stuff out of. I worry I'd just pull the site out when trying to get hold of my my keys.

But what of the results so far?
It's never very easy for me to spot how things are going from day to day. A couple of good (or bad) days on the trot and it can feel like I'm some sort of perpetual Diabetes Superhero/Catastrophe. Sometimes it feels like I've been having a problem for months, but looking back just a week or two and it becomes clear that it has only been a matter of days.

So I dug back through my records and picked some results to compare from three periods. Some old paper records from around the time we started writing this blog, some records towards the end of my time with the Accu-Chek Expert and some more recent ones with Artoo. I pulled 60 days of results to try to reduce the impact of a dodgy few weeks. I avoided holidays/Christmas or other challenging times of year and tried to pick a couple of 'normal' months for each. I knew things have been getting better for me in recent years, but I've not really compared and contrasted in this way before.

Testing frequency was roughly even in each case (between 7 and 8 times a day) and are made up of a mixture of waking, pre meal, post meal and bedtime tests.

The first thing that surprised me was how much improvement I had been able to make on my own with MDI, even before the help of the Expert. Due to an, ahem, administrative/back-up error I don't have a full 60 days immediately pre-Expert to compare, but even so, before Artoo the number of highs and lows were substantially improved.

Hypos - below 3.9 (70)
Old MDI was the worst with 20% of readings, the Expert reduced this to 10% of readings and Artoo has made a small improvement taking this down to 8.7% - clearly Artoo and I still have work to do here.

Hypos - below 3 (54)
The old MDI records really don't do well here, with almost half of all hypos coming in below the 3 (54) mark. Compared to what I'm used to in recent years it made uncomfortable viewing. Both the Expert and Artoo fare much better with 2.4% and 2% of all readings coming in at that level. Both with the Expert and with Artoo, none of these hypos have been 'nasties'. I can't remember the last time I had a really bad one it was so many years ago. I've been functioning, spotted them and able to treat them all myself. That may not have been the case with the old MDI records.

Highs - above 10 (180)
The same pattern of worse, slightly better, better again repeats here. Old MDI shows 19% of readings over 10, with the Expert that falls to 16% and reduces to 13% with Artoos assistance.

Highs - above 13 (234)
This is where Artoo really shines at the moment. Despite having subjected me to an occasional stratospheric BG with a dodgy set, in the 60 days of data Artoo only allowed 0.04% of readings to stray over 13. The Expert does surprisingly badly here with 6% while even old chaotic-style MDI scrapes in with 5%.

Averages and SD
While averages can hide a multitude of unpleasant detail, I think that here they do seem to suggest positive progression. The old MDI average was 6.8 (122) with an SD of 3.3 (59), the Expert improves this with a slightly higher average 7.2 (130) but reduced SD of 3.0 (54). Artoo though trumps them all with the joint lowest average 6.8 (122) and a significantly lower SD of 2.4 (43).

So is it worth it?
YES! Absolutely. The ways in which Artoo has made my diabetic life easier to control, more spontaneous and simpler to get along with far outweigh the remaining niggles I have about infusion sites. Is it like being non-diabetic? No of course not. Actually I have to watch myself not to feel downhearted if I don't have perfect levels all the time because some mad part of my brain thinks that in theory this ought to be possible now. Well unfortunately Diabetes is still incredibly annoying and has lost none of its ability to throw out the rulebook and move the goalposts for weeks at a time. I don't suppose it ever will.

I have an HbA1c coming up in the next few months. It will be interesting to see if there is an improvement - my first post-pump A1c showed an 0.5% increase and I'm hoping I might be able to match my previous MDI result but with fewer highs and lows into the bargain.

We shall see.

UPDATE: Regarding set failures - I wrote this some months later. Set changes

The diabetic half hour

Just having to rattle this one down. I've got several other 'proper' posts jostling in my head, but this one has just emerged and rudely pushed its way to the front...

Is it just me or do many other diabetics seem to spend an interminable amout of time just waiting around? I'm not talking those charming hours spent in the cosy nooks of a doctor's surgery or the peace and tranquility of a clinic waiting room - I just mean the day to day business of pretending to be a pancreas. The waits I am talking about always seem to last about 'another half an hour'.

Wake up, test BG, bolus, pour coffee. Look at watch and think, "Better wait about half an hour for that insulin to realise it's meant to be doing something useful before I take the rash action of eating something."

Lunchtime, test BG, bolus, see above...

48 minutes after lunch. Hmmmm I wonder if I guessed that dollop of whatever right. Bit early yet, better wait about half an hour before testing to allow for the dose/food to get going.

Oops, got that wrong. 9.something... If I walk to the shops that'll sort that out. Back from the shops. Wonder if that worked. Better leave it about half an hour for that sort of low-level exercise to have any effect I suppose.

Evening meal (inexplicably spared the need for a pre-meal half hour wait). Look at watch, 56 minutes since finishing. Bit early yet. Better leave it about half an hour before seeing how things are going.

Bedtime. Dual wave finished some time ago but there are still a fair few units (and some takeaway) doing their thing. Better leave it a while before turning in. There... was that long enough? Ah no... that was only 27 minutes, better leave it about another half an hour.

I'm sure if I had all those back and added them together I'd have about twice as many hours in the day! And half an hour is not quite enough time to do any one thing, but slightly too long to do nothing. It's a time period where it's easy to get distracted and forget what you were supposed to be doing (waiting to eat after bolusing is a nightmare for this).

And a lot can happen in half an hour, diabetically speaking. You can be waiting to give it long enough to check and all the while your BGs can be rocketing skyward. 30 minutes of rapid climb meaning it'll take even longer to resolve.

Case in point yesterday: I had tested to find a couple of low level dips in the morning where I'd underestimated the level of activity and not sufficiently reduced basal. In the afternoon I feared the same was happening again, but rather than testing I just topped up here and there with a sip of Lucozade or a fruit pastille. Before evening meal I was an entirely self-inflicted 12.2 (220). Not ideal. In an attempt to speed the return to better levels I left Jane washing up (sorry about that) and went for a brisk 40 minute walk. Once back I waited for things to settle (about half an hour, of course) but then found that rather than improving things I was up to a wince-inducing 24.8 (446). Frustratingly I rarely feel any symptoms with quick rises into kidney-frying territory so I had waited none-the-wiser while my liver had decided that my BG was far too high to be walking about and what I really needed was an additional surge of glucose. Great. Thanks for that.

On the other hand I had changed set just before evening meal so maybe it was nothing to do with the walk and it was just a set failure?

A full 5 unit correction administered there was nothing to do but wait and see if thigs got better or worse. Ready yet? Nope, not long enough. Another half hour should do it... (I always seem at least twice as eager for a correction to start working as it is able to start reducing BGs).

Thankfully I did come down overnight, and very smoothly too. Artoo earning back my trust with a 6.5 (117) at 2am, followed by another 6.5 (117) on waking this morning.

Yet another day when I would *love* the immediacy of feedback that a Continuous Glucose Monitor offers. Ah well, without a lottery-win (unlikely as we don't do it) that isn't going to happen with the current pricing structure.