Wrong injection

For the first time in 32 years the other night I injected my short acting insulin instead of my long acting insulin, as this had never happened before I was wondering (just in case it happens again) what is the course of action to take.

Long and short of it, it would depend on how many units you took and what your body's specific insulin needs are at the time you took the QA dose. I think you'll probably need to eat something with either option.

1. To go with missing your long acting (BI) dose would be slightly problematic later on with any during day QA doses it normally supports, but it may be worth while for a one off error in the name of life safety. This choice is more of an issue if you take your BI once a day, rather than split it, since then it's most of your daily background support gone if not taken.

2. That said, if you took your BI with the accidental QA anyway, if you knew of a high carbohydrate content snack and had good idea of your QA meal ratio at the time of the dose error (say, if evening, possibly your evening meal ratio), you could possibly eat to compensate for the error. The great thing about QA (Humalog or Novarapid) is they have a working time of 2-5 hours so if you can eat within your ratio okay, you will minimise disruption of your BG control.

It's hard to say for sure when I don't know your specific individual insulin needs. I am also assuming that you are not using a pump (I don't either). Glad you got through it okay though. I hope it didn't throw your control out too much and that you're feeling better now.
Best wishes.

lel,

We all do it ONCE!

When this happened to me (about 15 years ago!) my endocrinologist told me that I would be very alarmed and would probably not be able to sleep…I didn't ...well not very well. Advice was to eat an extra meal (as soon as I realised based on the size of the dose) and to test every two hours. I (apart from being scared silly) was fine in the morning as you obviously were! I think it also depends on the size of the dose and a heap of other things as well. My endocrinologist also arranged for someone to call me in the morning to see if I was OK…he would have put into train a plan if I didn't answer the phone.

Valuable lesson!
Helen

This is something I've almost done several times, so you are not alone.

I think I would probably test every couple of hours for up to 24 hours, depending on results and how I felt. If the extra QA was taken when the previous QA still in your system, then your BG might drop more than normal. If minimal QA present, then take some carbs to soak up the extra QA – just handle as an extra meal, using most suitable ratio. Action might also depend on number of units taken - eg if your BI is 20 but your QA is 4 then 20 units of QA would have larger effect than if the numbers were closer

You don't say if you took the missed BI. If you didn't, then you'll probably be high for several hours which might need several corrections to bring back to normal.

I did something similar (just once!) - combination of QA's too close and/or miscalculated units. After about 2 hrs, BG dropped dramatically and all I could do was counteract with cartons of juice & carbs (not in a fit state to test). But I think I over-corrected and after another 2 or 3 hrs ended up feeling really ill and with ketones. Treated these for next 24-hrs as in DAFNE (test and inject QA every 2 hours) and then returned to normal. Felt really bad as lost an entire night's sleep with horrendous thumping headache.

Hope this makes some sense and helps
Alturn

Been there, on a 1:1 QA ratio I had 16 units of QA instead of BI, had quite a few snacks that day