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.
You guys who up your basals are so brave….it’s something I’ve never really done because I’m a little gun shy about figuring out how it works on my pump 🙂 I do sort of a modified version of it, though, by using dual-wave and square wave boluses.
I change my basals, but I set temporary basals. If it is not working, I can just cancel it and go back to what it regularly is.
I love my temp basals. It’s a strange week if I haven’t used one!
Yay, you definitely nailed it!! 🙂