Saturday, April 12, 2014

Day 2 as a Pod Person

My first day as a pod person had its ups and downs, or at least my blood sugar did. After my blood sugar had been high all morning, the PDM finally suggested a correction bolus to bring it down.

When I was finally down to a blood sugar in the single digits I ate a chocolate bar. The PDM then suggested a bolus for the chocolate that was a bit more than I thought I needed, but I accepted the bolus. That was a mistake, as I wound up with hypoglycemia at a blood sugar of 2.4.

However, a glass of Coke and another chocolate bar brought it back to normal. I then had to figure out how to keep it up. At first I thought I would reduce my basal rate, but I soon found the "suspend" function, and I suspended all insulin delivery for the next 90 minutes, until I had supper.

I spent most of my evening working on my new house, and I noticed my blood sugar was dropping quite quickly. Time to suspend basal insulin again. Another hour and my blood sugar had increased, so I turned on the basal once more.

I slept like the proverbial log last night, completely unaware of the pod on my arm, even when I was lying on it. The biggest change I noticed was eating without doing an injection. For more than 40 years I have done an injection at breakfast time, and this morning all I had to do was push a couple of buttons on my PDM -- fewer buttons than you would push to send a text message.

Obviously I am still getting used to setting my insulin dose on the PDM. I think my peaks and crashes on day one were due to a combination of miscalculation of carbohydrates and more activity than I was anticipating, along with the learning curve on the pump. I think I'm getting there, though, and soon I will be an expert pod person.

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