My daily life with insulin
When I went home after the hospital, I was a very naive T1D. My endocrinologist gave me a very simple set of rules to use–that was really great because it was already more than I could tackle to start with.
I was an MDI user, using both basal insulin and bolus insulin. I used a basal insulin (Lantus at the time) that worked for me for 24 hours. One a day, in the evening, I would inject my basal insulin, which was dictated to me by my endocrinologist (I would take over this role a few months ago). If I ended up too high or too low, we would call my endo, and she would update the number—-so that was easy.
I would inject bolus insulin at meal time, and any other time that I was above 180 mg/dl (3.3 mmol/l) (but that was very rare, because, after the first few days, I was ba ck in honeymoon: my body was making some of its own insulin, which was nicely regulating me. For meals, that was easy: I was supposed to take a constant number of carbs per meal, and I would inject a constant amount of insulin. If I was higher or lower than my target BG, I would inject a little more or less insulin, using a Correction Factor CF (also called Insulin Sensitivity Factor, ISF) and a target BG. Here is how:
If my target BG was 150, and I tested at 200, with a CF of 50, I would subtract my target BG from my actual, getting 50, then divide by my CF, and get a result of 1, which would be what I added to myu meal insulin.Conversely, if I was lower than my target BG, I would take corresponding less.
When I would test significantly high or low, and 3 hours away from a meal in both directions, I would correct my BG using the same method. That was rarely the case, because I was in honeymoon, and also because I did not test that often…
Growing up T1D 