Tuesday, January 20, 2009

When Insulin Goes Bad!

On my return flight from Costa Rica I had mentioned some annoying highs that were tough to get down. That pattern became more severe in the days immediately after my return to the states and continued for the better part of the week. Originally I had thought the pesky highs were from some not so stellar eating habits during a glutinous period.

Last Wednesday I went to Cheesecake factory with my sister and had to take in nearly 20 units of insulin to get my blood sugar below 200! Originally I had thought that this was due to a huge portion of nachos, bacon cheeseburger and order of fries (gotta live sometimes!) but the next day when my blood sugar sky rocketed from a turkey sandwich on whole wheat I began to think something else was up. It seemed that the only thing that would get my blood sugar down was exercise.

During my drive back down to Charlottesville my blood sugar spiked near 400 after having just a Clif Builder Bar for breakfast. Then it dawned on me, my basal rates weren't wrong, my insulin had gone bad. I guess with all the traveling the insulin molecules began to break down and became about 1/4 as effective as they should have been. Changing the vial solved my problem but gave me a great idea. Why can't pharmaceutical companies put a component in the insulin that lets us know when the molecules goes bad - a 4th grader with a chemistry set could figure out how to do it and it would save all of us alot of angst and aggravation.

2 comments:

Kim said...

did you have a side of fried fish tacos with your clif bar on your way to c-ville?! :) glad everything is back on track - the healthy eating and working out must help immensely.

Scott K. Johnson said...

Oy. I agree - some signal that the insulin is not doing it's normal thing would be such a great help in our troubleshooting.

Maybe they think we already HAVE a signal (our high BG's!). The problem is there is a laundry list of possible reasons.