Samantha Walsh
Samantha Walsh has lived with type 1 diabetes for over five years since 2017. After her T1D diagnosis, she was eager to give back to the diabetes community. She is the Community and Partner Manager for T1D Exchange and helps to manage the Online Community and recruit for the T1D Exchange Registry. Prior to T1D Exchange, Samantha fundraised at Joslin Diabetes Center. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a Bachelors degree in sociology and early childhood education.
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Have you given yourself a rapid-acting insulin injection instead of a long-acting one by mistake (or vice versa)? Share how you handled this situation in the comments. Cancel reply
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Last year on shots woke to a 130-something. Figuring 2 units to get near 70, grabbed what I thought was Glargine and dialed up 13 uniits…looking down realized it was Aspart.
Wearing a CGM (Libre3) sipped lemonade and chewed a granola bar; carried sweetened lemonade out as I fed the cats outside, finished preparing for work. Kept a sweetened drink by me all day, drove to work with it next to my ice tea.
Each time I saw 75-80 sipped something, generally rising to 130-140. Went through 4 or 5 “20ounce” bottles of lemonade, 2 regular cokes, at lunch dosed for 3/4 the meal, and said “Screw it!” dosed for 1/2 a milkshake. The effects seemed to last until 3:30 or so (levels rose higher than expected and the drop stopped) from 5:40-ish that morning.
Worked a little slower, was exhausted, but got paid to keep from panicking.
I said no, but I used to live in fear of that mistake.
No but once when I was a newbie, I bolused my blood sugar reading instead of the carbs for the meal. Had to do some serious eating to compensate. Now, I try NOT to get distracted when I am bolusing. Going to a closed loop system will help.
I’ve done something similar – accidentally put the carbs in the manual bolus amount. It’s hard not to get distracted especially when your job is distractions all day long. 😵💫
I didn’t handle but luckily EMTs did. Damn blue pens.
I keep my current long acting pen in the kitchen closet. Only take it out in the morning to give myself my shot. Fast acting is NEVER in the closet.
I answered no to this question but I came really close one time. I had primed my “Lantus” pen with my normal 20 units when at the last moment before delivering I realized that I was holding my Humalog pen. At one time they were both the same gray color until they changed the Humalog pen to blue.
On MDI and use a pink InPen. Hard to confuse with the beige Toujeo. Also do not store together. Use Toujeo before bed and keep in the same place all the time. InPen is with me all the time.
Increased monitoring and taking additional carbohydrate as required
For me that seems like ancient history. I put No since I seriously doubt it.
I haven’t but one time when I was in the hospital after surgery, they reversed the dose. That caused an extra day in the hospital!
Back in 2008?? when I was on pens, I took 18 units rapid acting instead of Lantus. I realized what I had dine when I pulled the pen out. I got my wife to drive me to the local Dairy Queen and had a large chocolate milkshake (approx 150 carbs listed). This worked out pretty good, crisis was averted.
I am using a pump, no long acting insulin
Used to think of this as one of those “Hasn’t everyone?” questions, though pre-CGM Lantus-Novolog MDI was a long while back for me. But I did do it once. Stopped in mid-squirt when I saw the wrong injector in my hand—hey, I hadn’t had coffee yet!—but I’d already injected way over my usual a.m. bolus dose. What did I do? Enjoyed an apple danish for breakfast.
I think I’ll use that excuse, too, for my one time mixup. I hadn’t had my coffee yet!
I filled my pod and it didn’t seem like it was working even after bolusing extra. I also gave myself an injection from that vial. I decided that the insulin was bad. I opened a new vial and replaced that pod. My BG came down to where it should be. Later if figured out I had used the long-acting instead of the short-acting insulin.
I give my basal injection when I wake up. But one time and one time only, I bolused instead of injecting with my basal insulin. As soon as I did it, I realized what I had done. I started eating the kitchen and gulping down my glucose shots. I’m a fitness instructor so when I got to class, my BS was still very low. My students bought me two regular Dr Pepper sodas and I gulped them down. I started my class at a lower level but could on my Dexcom that it was starting to go up. Was able to finish the class w/out a problem. Now I keep my basal and bolus insulin far away from each other – ha!
This was a number of years ago while on MDI and finger sticks. Luckily, I immediately realized what I had done- given fast acting for my evening basal dose. I calculated the number of carbs I would need to consume to cover the insulin and then ate those carbs, along with some protein over a couple of hours. I also did multiple finger sticks to monitor the situation.
Once, and I swear it will never happen again (and hasn’t). I recognized my mistake immediately, and immediately gorged on more sugar than I have ever eaten before at one time in my life (fruit nectar, chocolate bars, jelly bellies). Fortunately I was quite high at the start so I had time to respond before things got serious. I was pretty sure that much sugar would bail me out, but my wife insisted that I go to the emergency room anyway, which I did (she drove, of course). They fitted me with an IV just in case, but after all that sugar simply waiting in the emergency room kept me from getting into dangerous territory. No IV glucose was needed. Since then, Novo Nordisk changed Levimir pens to be a different shape than those for their fast-acting pens (that transition caused a supply problem because clearly they wanted to sell all their old pens before supplying the new version, but that’s another story). I’m disappointed that the new pen design is slower and more difficult to inject with, and wonder why they didn’t change the design of their fast-acting insulin pens instead, since it is really only the substitution of fast for slow that is the problem.
Oh yes, twice. The second time was 15u in the morning. Thankfully I realised because I took my intended breakfast bolus of 5u, so I just had the best breakfast ever instead!
Happy days …
Yes, a very long time ago when I was on MDI and still taking Regular (beef/pork) and NPH. I was an undergrad, finals were approaching and I had spent most of the night /early morning hours going over “notes” from an art history class that always put me to sleep in a dark lecture hall. With just a couple hours of sleep I took my morning injection before noticing I was holding the NPH vial instead of the Regular. I rushed down to the cafeteria line and got a huge glass of orange juice. Since I’d taken NPH, it wasn’t immediately effective. The rest of that day was a dizzy mix of highs and lows, but since this was long before home bg monitors I really didn’t have a clue and just stumbled on going to my classes.
Back in the dark ages of R/NPH I used to do the mixed-shot thing in the a.m., so I don’t know if I could have gotten as far as filling the syringe with both before noticing I’d screwed it up. Can’t even remember what my doses were but getting them flipped would be a head scratcher with NPH, the effect curve being so slow. OJ now or wait three hours for it to start coming on??? I was dx’d when R/N was still relatively new and yeah, likewise pre-glucometer. Chemstrips was what we used IIRC. Split ’em the long way for a twofer. Much hairier back then, you just had to live by the clock and hope not to get whacked out of the blue. I used to call it the Eat Now or DIE regimen.
I once took fast acting instead of long acting and ate a lot of ice cream. I once did the reverse but could ignore it since it was only 1 unit.
Yes before I got my pump one night I took my short term insulin instead of my long term. I ate a lot of candy and drank a lot of fruit juice along with chocolate milk!! It was a long night.,
Around 30 years ago when I was relatively new to T1D I was on MDI. I gave myself a full day’s shot of long acting in the morning. I was at a family reunion. Luckily, I recognized what I had done and my husband and I went down to the hotel restaurant where I ordered a large “carby” breakfast with fruit and pastry and juice. I can’t remember if I went high afterward (no CGM and sure I must have) but I had no incident that needed additional help. I had so little education concerning insulin at the beginning. My education included how to inject a lemon, and a couple sheets on carb counting and exchanges.
I started out on MDI and accidentally used short acting instead of long acting one morning. I didn’t realize what I’d done until I was on the computer and I couldn’t recognize letters anymore. I ate half an ice cream cake to try to make up for the extra insulin. It was not an experience I ever wanted to repeat, so I was SUPER careful after that. I much prefer being on a pump so I don’t have to worry about different insulins anymore.
I said yes, but not since I have been on a pump and only using Novolog.
Happened shortly after I was diagnosed. Luckily I was on only 4 units of Lantus so I just ate a lot of cereal!
Yes, I remember once doing that. I just drank some juice and watched my sugar for the next few hours.
Shortly after my diagnosis and while visiting my daughter, I gave myself 4.5 units of my long acting by mistake before breakfast. I realized it while still holding the pen in my hand.
I had a CGM and was advised by my endo’s office to decrease short acting insulin boluses for that day and take the other half of my long acting that evening. Worked out OK, but I now wrap a rubber band around the barrel of my long acting as a visual and tactile reminder.
I do not use long acting, but once, I gave myself an 8 unit bolus instead of 0.8. Thank goodness for glucagon!
I have been a T1D for over 57 years and never taken any other Insulin other than R- U100.
I must change my answer, I was started on Diabnaize, a pill in 1968, I took PZI-U100 injections (Now used for animals) which was a “long-acting” Insulin when I first started Injections until I went on a Travenol Auto-Syringe, then a Baxter Pump. Both companies went out of Business, along with a series of Metronic Pumps, now on Tandem X2 in my 41 years on pumps and CGM’s. Used R-U100, Humalog U100 then Novalog U100 insulin.
Accidentally gave myself 10 instead of 1 on pump. I drank a lot of juice and ate food till it came up from 55 when my alarm went off to about 150 and ate accordingly for a few hours. I looked at my download online so I could see what happened as I was quite shocked and did not notice I had made an error till alarm went off at 55 while I was sitting and watching TV. I’m pretty sure my awareness was not great because I did not think to look at my bolus history which I cd have done right away.
No, but once, many years ago, I accidentally gave my diabetic cat MY dosage of insulin. I dropped her off at an emergency animal clinic for the day. Afterwards they said she didn’t have much of a reaction. Puzzling.
Since I knew my carb ratio, I calculated how many carbs I’d need to cover the insulin. But, it was difficult on timing because I typically need only 1-1.5 units for a meal (I eat low carb and I’m super sensitive to insulin). So to cover for the accidental 7 units was an enormous amount of carbs for me! The peaks didn’t match up, and so it took several hours to recover from that roller coaster. A few months later I was on a pump.
First thought I killed myself 17 units of fast when already low drank about 64 oz of Mexican coke until about 2 in the afternoon just to keep around 70 bad day
I’m on one insulin. That’s it.
I’m on an insulin pump. Before the pump it was extremely hard to keep numbers under control. Realized symptoms of highs and lows never showed up until it was in a pretty serious situation.