Upped Basals FTW

I woke up early on Saturday morning to go for a long run, and I didn’t feel good at all, so I went back to sleep.  I went on a bike ride later and planned to do my run on Sunday.  When I woke up on Sunday I had been consumed by a head cold.  My blood sugars agreed. They were stubbornly sitting around 250 all day, no matter what I ate, what I bolused and changing my pump. In the middle of the afternoon I remembered that I had another tool in my “bag of tricks.” I upped my basal.  I was running with an extra 50% basal for 2 hours at a time.  I set an alarm on my phone so that I could test at the end of each one.  I knew that it was making some difference, but my blood sugars still kept creeping up.  I cannot imagine what my Dexcom would’ve looked like if I hadn’t upped my basal.  When I was 350 before going to sleep, I decided to up my basal overnight.  I definitely was unsure if this was a safe decision, but I put my Dexcom in a tupperware container next to my bed and set the basal for the whole night.  I wanted to get my blood sugars down and get sleep.  When I woke up yesterday morning, there was a gradual line during the night, and I woke up at 99.  The fact that it worked is just as surprising to me as it is to you.  I watched my Dexcom like a hawk yesterday, and when I didn’t need an upped basal rate. However, when I forgot to bolus for my coffee, my sugars shot right up, and were stuck there.  So when the Dexcom woke me up in the middle of the night because I was still high, I set another upped basal till morning.  Today I woke up around 80 with another gradual line.  The over night upped basal does make me very nervous, and it’s not something I like doing, but it seems to be the only thing to bring my blood sugars down while I’m under the weather.