listening to Radio 4 happily announce the launch of “the artificial pancreas” in the NHS.<\/p>\n
I realise, I’m one of the 900 trialing this approach in the UK and it’s far from the freedom being touted in the article.<\/p>\n
I got my new pump, a Tandem TSlim X2 with “Control iQ” on the 13th January and on the day I got it, my HbA1c was 5.6% which in layman’s terms means an average of approx. 6mmol\/l.\u00a0 Over the past few weeks, using my Dexcom, I have tuned my basal dose in my pump and my boluses to keep my glucose between 4 and 6.7mmol\/l 80% of the time and between 3.8 and 10mmol\/l 97% of the time quite often.\u00a0 I still get highs, I still get lows but I’m in amazing shape.<\/p>\n
This is not the same as being non-diabetic; the average non-diabetic is ranging from 3.5 to 6.8mmol\/l > 98% of the time.\u00a0 But I’m reasonably close with a target blood glucose level of 4.8mmol\/l for corrections etc.\u00a0 If I’m bolusing, that’s my goal 75% of the time (exercise changes it as does driving).<\/p>\n
I was looking forward to it.\u00a0 I knew it wouldn’t be running as low, in “normal mode” as I do, but I was expecting it to spot when I was high (getting my boluses wrong) and correct round the edges and more importantly, pick up if I’m dropping a bit low.<\/p>\n
Not really.\u00a0 First, I had that great HbA1c on a completely different insulin, which didn’t work with the algorithm.<\/p>\n
So, a new insulin.\u00a0 Which meant my basals didn’t work.<\/p>\n
Shouldn’t be an issue, it will tune on top of the basals.\u00a0 Only it didn’t.\u00a0 After 7 weeks, I’d ditched it for running over night from about 9pm.\u00a0 After 9 weeks, I’d ditched during the day too.<\/p>\n
I don’t like running that high.\u00a0 Full stop.\u00a0 More importantly, I don’t want my insulin to be shut off when I’m above 7mmol\/l, because it believes I’m going to be low in 3 hours time leading to my blood sugar being above 10mmol\/l regularly.<\/p>\n
It reducing my evening basal regularly meant I was being hyper more times than I could mention with blood sugar high enough to wake me in the night needing the loo and that’s when I could persuade it that my blood sugar needed to be below 7mmol\/l to allow me to sleep!<\/p>\n
It decreased my time in range against the levels I was given as a 7 year old and just left me feeling tired all the time.\u00a0 A thoroughly miserable experience and that’s ignoring the fact it didn’t cope with different stages in my menstrual cycle – I had to manually programme them.<\/p>\n
No, it was more cautious about correcting highs but that just meant I had to turn it off – the classic was when I’d got a bolus wrong and it shut my insulin off when I was above 9mmol\/l leading to me being above 13mmol\/l and fighting a hyper at 3am.\u00a0 When I got it below 8mmol\/l I turned on the closed loop only for it to not start “tuning” when I got to 6mmol\/l which would have saved me from dropping below 3mmol\/l an hour later because it deemed 6mmol\/l as being “perfect”.<\/p>\n
And that was before I caught Covid-19.\u00a0 I thought it might at least help with that.<\/p>\n
No.\u00a0 I tried for the first couple of days but it wouldn’t keep my blood sugar down enough to allow me to fight the infection.\u00a0 That’s when my non-diabetic husband suggested I give up the fight and turn off the loop.<\/p>\n
Pretty much.\u00a0 The worst bit is being on an insulin that is harder to correct highs with because it has a slower acting rapid onset.\u00a0 Having spent the past 6 weeks tuning my basal, I’m pretty much I still bereft of losing my old pump and the freedoms it gave me.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
listening to Radio 4 happily announce the launch of “the artificial pancreas” in the NHS. I realise, I’m one of the 900 trialing this approach in the UK and it’s far from the freedom being touted in the article. I got my new pump, a Tandem TSlim X2 with “Control iQ” on the 13th January […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-type-1-diabetes"],"yoast_head":"\n