1/10 Buzz-AMPS 413

Yikes! Kind of to be expected, I know, after reducing the dose last night. Hanging in there, waiting for more blues and greens.

 

Yup that's the biggest side effect of Lantus...it tries your patients sometimes! I am not a patient person, so many times I wanted to throw the meter when I was dissatisfied. I wrote more than once I was trying to control my urge to just shoot him full to get a nice low number. Once you start to see some good results though, all that frustration will be nothing more than a faint memory.

 

Sadly, I am not a patient person either. I think that is the one thing about Lantus that is really going to take some getting used to. With PZI, you would get immediate results on that cycle, so you could adjust the dose the next cycle if necessary. I liked the instant gratification of knowing I was doing something proactive, I guess.

I am confident that I will be thrilled with Lantus very soon. I was really happy yesterday when she got that good (great) drop on her very first dose. Things are looking good. I will just have to remember not to throw my meter.

 

I never used PZI, but I suffered for 3 months on Caninsulin, and I found that to be a real rollercoaster. It also offered immediate gratification when I was agonizing over a red Preshot then after 3 or 4 hours we had blues or even a green!! then by PS back to red :evil: It was constant up and down of emotions, I got tireed of having to try and predict what the dose would give me, I actually attempted a Lantus like approach, with that insulin by trying to hold the dose steady for longer periods, which somedays worked out well, and others sent me screaming. He was still on dry and would NOT even look at canned, so I had to shoot and try to predict how much he would eat. If I let him free feed he would stuff himself and stay high. Mealtimes didn't work either, he would have spikes and valleys (I would have been better off feeding like a person 3 meals a day and giving R as a bolus with meals) :lol:

When I switched I satisfied my anxiety and overcame the barrier of dry food by using somewhat less common increments for dose increases (I changed by .5U) It worked out ok untill I started getting him into a mealtime schedule and eventually eating some canned food, then I made smaller dose changes.

 

Yes, the up and down of PZI is really the only thing I had a problem with. It is frustrating, and while the immediate gratification aspect of it was awesome, it was also scream-inducing because you could just as easily get a red # from making an adjustment as you could a green #. At least that was my experience. So I am hopeful that we can ditch that aspect of insulin while still getting the great results (OTJ!) that we got with PZI.

 

Ah, a save-a-strip day. The beginning is like that, as you expected. It's a good idea to grab a mid-cycle test just to see what, if anything, happens today. I'm sure Buzz will appreciate the lack of pokes. ;-)

The start of Lantus is tough, or at least it was for me. Like you, I am not patient at all. To watch Sasha sitting in 300's, when she had never been in 300's much on PZI, was nerve-wracking. Thankfully it passed quickly, which I think was much in part to the fact that she was mostly tightly regulated on PZI first. We had the liver training out of the way, so all we had to do was get to the right dose.

For us it was well worth it, and I truly hope that it will be for you and Buzz too. Just do ask any questions you may have and read, read, read the stickies over and over. PZI and Lantus are such different beasts, and giving up the PZI mindset is hard. I already can tell though, from the way you handled last night, that you'll adjust quickly.

Do you need to start moving your shot time back at all in order to leave room for before bed testing and cycle management (when necessary in the future)?