Last night we had our first diabetes mix up. My daughter gave herself her insulin before bed without having us check it before she admistered it (which is a rule in our household) and she accidently gave herself Novolog instead of her Lantus! Yikes! I am glad I checked her before I went to bed because she was already at 50 and fast asleep. We have now enforced some new safety measures and we were able to get her back up over 100 after some midnight snacking. Has anyone else had any thing like this happen? I would love your feedback.
I gave myself Lantus instead of my Humalog the other night.. I went ahead & gave myself half of my Humalog also since I wasn't sure what to do. & that night I happen to be staying at a friends & we stayed up most of the night & then woke up around 11, which meant I'd missed usual morning dose but bc of that extra Lantus I was good still.
Yeah, I did shots for about 25 years and did this a few times. The old long acting insulins used to have a cloudy appearance so a mistake like this was harder to make.
Some people mark their long acting bottles but that only works if you remember to mark the bottle every time you open a new one.
I carried my insulin in a little cosmetic bag and finally put my long acting into a little Ziploc baggie, so I had to purposefully take it out to use it.
One of the reasons I love pumps is because they only use short acting and it keeps a log of insulin given, so it's easier to keep track of it I've already taken a dose or not.
This happened to me once when I was younger. My mom had me eat some candy, which I enjoyed a great deal, then she checked me at least once an hour, I don't remember for how long though, probably at least 6 hours. I switched to using a pump 12 years ago, so it hasn't been a concern of mine for a long time though.
I am a T1 and so is my son.....We are on different types of long acting insulin. He is on NPH and I am on Lantus. I was so tired one day that I drew up his insulin one night and without thinking I gave it to myself!!!! As soon as I pulled the needle out I realized what I did. He is on such a small dose that it didnt effect me at all and I gave my lantus as I usually do. It was right when he was first diagnosed and I was so used to it being only me that gets shots. I did give myself my novalog instead of lantus 1 time...It was scary for me...I measured out how many carbs I would have to eat and had a bowl of cereal. I still gave my lantus but set my alarm for two different times during the night. It ended up working out fine :-)
Since I'm on lantus and Humalog, I don't have a problem telling the vials apart. The problem for me is after 33 years of shots, I go on autopilot and sometimes don't remember which vial I drew from. Usually autopilot works out on the right vial I guess as I haven't had any bad lows from taking Humlalog when I should have been taking Lantus.
Thanks so much for all the replies. It helps to know we are not alone in this! I love the insulin bottle caps and sleves and will absolutely be ordering these today!
You are definitely not the only one! I was at summer camp when I was in middle school and I checked my blood sugar and it was high, so I gave a bolus (for those of you not on a pump a bolus is an extra dose for high bg or meals). I for some reason decided I didn't feel as high as it said I was and checked again and I was low. . . OOPS! I ate. . . A LOT and my roommate got the counselor and she talked to my dad and ended up waking me up in the middle of the night just to check. Everything turned out fine. I have also almost filled my pump with the wrong insulin after the pharmacist gave me the wrong kind and I just thought they had changed the color to my insulin since our insurance company used to switch me between novolg and humolog every 6 months or so. It was actually NPH, which I haven't heard of many people using anymore, but you have to mix it before filling the syringe and it gets cloudy. Luckily when I started filling my reservoir i noticed it got cloudy and figured that wasn't right. So a word of warning i guess - Check to make sure you received the correct meds!