Please help

[u/Aggravating-Carrot18]

I’ve been on a pump for about a month now and everything has been great until yesterday when I think I got sick (Or I just felt weird) and my sugars WILL NOT COME DOWN! I’ve called my clinic and I’ve tried something new but something still isn’t working. It takes what seems like 5-8 corrections to get my sugar down and when I finally do get it down I need to eat again and then the cycle repeats. I’m mentally tired from this I just need some help.

[u/Kaleandra]

Can you set a temp basal until you’re not impacted by illness anymore? I typically need 1.5-1.7 times my usual dose and then sometimes corrections as well. You’d have to test out what works for you obviously.

[u/EnoughNumbersAlready]

I hate to say this but I wish my CGM graph looked like this over 24hrs.

If you’re sick, then it’s natural that your blood sugars will be higher. I suggest taking a slightly higher dose of long acting insulin (I’m on MDI so I’m sorry that I can’t speak to pump equivalent of upping your dosage).

[u/Naanya2779 → u/EnoughNumbersAlready]

How do you determine how much to increase your basal when you’re sick? My daughter is MDI too and we struggle with the higher sugars when she is sick. Her basal insulin only doses in unit increments so we have been hesitant to mess with it.

[u/EnoughNumbersAlready → u/Naanya2779]

Ok so I am on Humalog and Tresiba quick pens which also have unit increments. I only increase my Tresiba by 1-2 units when I’m sick. So I normally take 28 units per evening but when I’m sick and running higher than usual, I start increasing it to 29 (if I have the 100ml quick pen) and see how that goes for 2 days. It takes my body about 2 days to adjust to a new dosage.

If I have the Tresiba 200ml quick pen that only has increments of 2, then I go from 28 units to 30 units since there is no choice for smaller increments.

My doctor sometimes doesn’t give me the same size Tresiba which is why I’ve adjusted to using either.

[u/kathryn-b96]

Maybe try changing the pump? I’ve had a couple of unusually stubborn highs since starting the pump and a pump change always seems to help

[u/hell0mandarkk]

It’s only been slightly high for a few hours according to this screenshot. Maybe just let the pump work if you’re in auto mode. 

[u/Lyiana_jay79]

My 7 year old daughter is type 1 . She will be getting a pump in the next few weeks. Doesn’t the pump automatically supply the exact insulin you need, based on a Dexcom, to avoid highs?

[u/The_Court_Of_Gerryl → u/Lyiana_jay79]

It’s still a machine, so it can’t do it perfectly, but it will give you insulin. It usually does pretty well for me, but if I’m insulin resistant for some reason I may have to give myself a bolus instead of purely relying on the pump to autocorrect.

Pump + cgm is still an amazing combo. My A1C used to be around a 7, sometimes higher and now my A1C varies from 5.7-6.2 and I eat pretty much whatever I want with only a few things I avoid.

[u/tincanicarus → u/Lyiana_jay79]

The pump has limits to how much it is "allowed" to correct without human interference. Those are for safety reasons. Unlimited insulin would be very bad!

[u/cia_1137 → u/Lyiana_jay79]

On top of what others have said - not all pumps do that