More on Humalog

As I said in my last post, Humalog is a fast-acting insulin that I inject from a handy "pen" before or just after each meal. It is a non-hexameric insulin generically called Lispro. Actually, it is an insulin analogue, whatever that means. It seems to have been engineered through recombinant DNA technology to make it quick to take effect (and quick to exit one's system).

I am new to Humalog and new to insulin in general, and I seem to have been getting erratic results with it.

I have been carefully logging my pre-prandial (immediately before a meal) and post-prandial (2 hrs. after a meal) blood sugar readings, along with the number of insulin units I have injected and the amount of carbohydrate I have consumed. There has seemed to be little predictability with respect to how these numbers relate to each other.

Today at breakfast I paid more attention than usual to the mechanics of injecting myself, while at the same time I was intentionally boosting my dosage because lower doses had seemed to be reducing my blood sugar too little. I noticed this morning that I had to exert quite a bit of pressure on the button or plunger — the gizmo on the end of the injector pen opposite the needle — in order to get the button to go in all the way and deliver the full dosage of insulin.

It struck me that in the past I may not have been pushing that little button in all the way, every time!

You are supposed to push "firmly" on the button until a diamond shape appears centered in a little window that is positioned along the shaft of the pen. I hadn't been consistently mindful of that, I realized somewhat sheepishly today.

You also need to carefully prime the pen before injecting — by squirting some insulin in the air prior to setting the dosage you want to inject. I have always been doing that properly, I think.

You additionally need to leave the needle in the injection site for a slow count of five after finishing pushing in the button, so that all the injected insulin has time to enter your body. I believe I have always been doing that properly as well.

But I probably haven't been pressing the button all the way in each and every time. The resistance to the pressure of one's thumb on the button goes way up in the last couple of millimeters of button travel, and I may not have been exerting sufficient pressure to overcome it.

From now on, I'll make a concerted effort to push the button all the way in until I see the diamond centered in the little window!


This means all my results to date are suspect. Rats! I went to see my general practitioner two days ago with complaints of inconsistent correlations between insulin, carbs, and blood sugar. I said there was some unknown X-factor interfering with my progress. Though he tried not to show it, I think he was a bit exasperated with it all. He didn't know what to tell me, so he referred me to a diabetes education nurse at a local hospital. I'll be seeing her next week.

If I have not been using the Humalog pen properly, it might well account for the inconsistency I've experienced. Only time will tell, then, whether I can gain the desired consistency by being more mindful of the proper injection technique.