I don't usually have the chance to run the insulin in my pump down to fumes. Usually, due to timing, work or the desire to sleep through the night, I will change my pump when there are still 10-15 units left.
I won't go to work with less than 20 units and I won't go to bed with less then 15.
I don't always need all that but I do if I'm high and I'll be damned if I'm getting up at 4am to refill my insulin pump because I was high in the night and drained it.
I'm sure one day I will find myself in the kitchen at 2am, refilling my pump with one eye open, hoping that the neighbours don't look in and get a bit more of a view than they bargained for. I just have no interest in adding that to my ridiculous diabetes moments list so I always change my pump before bed if I'm down to 15 units or less.
Yesterday morning I had 20 units left after breakfast. Enough to get through an 8-hour work day if nothing went wrong.
I risked it.
My blood sugar was fine after breakfast so no extra boluses needed. I had a good lunch that happened to be a bit lower in carbs than usual so that worked out well too. No post-lunch highs so, again, no extra insulin needed.
After work I had a 4:15pm rendezvous at the driving range and still had a few units left. I knew I would be home around 5pm so I figured I was still good to go.
I got home after the driving range and noticed that the weeds in the front garden were more noticeable than they should have been so I dumped my stuff in the kitchen and headed back out with the yard waste bag. I was happily puttering away when my Rose buzzed to tell me that I was 10.5 and climbing.
Odd. I don't usually climb in the afternoon without eating and I had just hit a big bucket of balls which has to count as some form of exercise non?
Oh well, I bolused 2 units (without doing a blood test to verify the pump's number first. I know I know I'm going to hell) and bent over to continue weeding. Rose immediately alarmed again to say that I was out of insulin. Oh right! I forgot about that.
I quickly finished weeding the section I was working on and headed in. I refilled Rose and then bolused the 2 units again.
Yep. I actually did it. Just like that.
Didn't even think to check how much of the first two units were injected before the pump was empty.
Turns out I got the entire first dose. Plus the entire second dose. So now I have four units in my body and my dinner plans are a big huge salad with some carbs (black beans) but not enough to cover all the insulin I had just taken. I had two small pieces of baklava I was saving for dessert and there was no way I was eating those to deal with the low I knew would happen. I wanted to savour them, not use them as medicine.
I ate a banana (20 carbs) and started making dinner. I checked Rose every few minutes to see what was happening. I dropped slowly from 10 to 8 and then the nice green arrow changed from one arrow pointing at 135 degrees to two green arrows pointing straight down. I had a date and continued chopping. At 4.8 I was still showing the double down arrows so I caved and had an oatmeal cookie. I was now up to about 50 carbs. Enough to deal with the four units of insulin I took.
I ate my dinner (which was absolutely delicious by the way) and Rose informed me that I dropped to 3.9 before heading back up to 7 and settling there. Not bad considering.
Lesson for today: if you go to work with only 20 units of insulin in your pump do not decide to weed the garden after a trip to the driving range. Even if you hit a couple of pretty good balls. It will cause you to get so annoyed at the weeds that you double bolus for a mild high and end up eating cookies so that you don't eat baklava. Or something like that.
Anyway, I have to go. I have some baklava to savour.
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