Comment by everydayupsanddowns on February 10, 2011 at 3:11am

Sounds very like your liver is wading in and trying to 'help out' to me. Any chance you might be missing hypos (which then trigger the liver to go into 'emergency mode' and dump glucagon)? The 'unresponsive' nature of the highs might be down to the continuing release of glucagon, so even without eating any carbs your BGs would be rising.

Some days my liver seems to dump nothing at all, other days I can get a rise of 72 which stubbornly refuses to go back down.

Not sure what you can do about it though (unless it is down to a hypo rebound in which case avoiding them is the key).

Just gotta keep testing I guess :-\

Comment by Kelly on February 10, 2011 at 12:30pm

Hi Everydayupsanddowns ~ What you said makes sense. This was suggested by a couple of other longtime diabetics who had a similar problem. I often do have lows but I treat them immediately. Not sure about when I am sleeping though.
When these high BG's occur, it takes hours, about a 1/2 day to become stable again. Crazy!
I test about 8xday but when this situation occurs, I test non-stop like a maniac... Bottom line - how do I prevent this from occurring? Its affecting my life/living. I need to start looking for a job but can't have this interfere when i start a new job, ughh!
Thanks for the great suggestion...I think you are pretty accurate.

Comment by everydayupsanddowns on February 11, 2011 at 3:39am

Do you test your basal? That's another thing that can help explain 'random' BG behaviour for me. Just a unit over the day either too high or too low can cause all sorts of erratic behaviour from meal boluses for me. Oh and of course you'll know that your higher your BGs are the less response you'll get per unit of correction.

Never easy is it :(

Comment by Kelly on February 12, 2011 at 1:29am

Everydayupsanddowns~ I do have some extreme lows. But not as much w/in the last month yet this craziest happened w/ the high bg just a couple of days ago. I can't pin point it. I have not tested my basal rates. I just saw my endo in Jan and she reset them slightly (due to some hypos that I complained of). I just started using the Bolus Wizard feature on my pump a while ago so that is why I was having some drastic hypos. But....this issue w/ the random Highs has been occurring for a lil over a year (randomly).
Do you think I should test my basal rates?

Comment by dickengel on February 12, 2011 at 8:02am

Have you changed the Canula depth? I recently had this same problem where a site seemed to quit working like i was not receivibg any insulin. I went to a deper canula and this problem went away. But when having High BG levels due to site problems, remember that you are missing basal insulin so you probably need to bolus both for the high and 2 or 3 hours of basal - then will still take a couple hours to correct. If you only bolus for the high BG, then it might take 6 hrs or so to correct.

I was using 9 mm Cleos, but switched to AccuChek infusion sets. I started on the 8mm canula and the site would work fine for 15 to 30 hours and then it was like a switch was turned and no insulin was delivered. Changing the site helped but was slow to respond so I increased the Bolus to include 2 hrs basal. I then ordered teh 10 mm canulas and all is well so far.

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