Living with Diabetes
111
9
To avoid hypoglycemia (low blood glucose)
•
Work with your healthcare provider to establish individual-
ized
blood glucose targets
and guidelines.
•
Keep a fast-acting
carbohydrate
with you at all times to
respond quickly to low blood glucose. Examples of fast-
acting carbs are glucose tablets, hard candies or juice.
•
Teach your friends, family members and colleagues to
recognize the signs of hypoglycemia, so they can help if you
develop
hypoglycemia unawareness
or a severe adverse
reaction.
•
Keep a glucagon injection kit with your emergency supplies.
Teach friends and family members how to give a glucagon
injection in case you have severe hypoglycemia and become
unconscious.
Again,
frequent blood glucose checks are the key to avoiding
potential problems
. Detecting low blood glucose early lets you
treat it before it becomes a problem.
Check with your healthcare provider for guidance in any and all
areas listed above.
To treat hypoglycemia (low blood glucose)
Any time your blood glucose is low, treat immediately. Check it
every 15 minutes while you are treating, to make sure you don’t
overtreat the condition and cause blood glucose levels to rise
too high.
Hypoglycemia unawareness is a condition in which
you do not realize when your blood glucose level is
low. If you are prone to hypoglycemia unawareness,
you may want to use the mylife OmniPod System’s
blood glucose reminder and check your blood glu-
cose more frequently. See “Alerts and Reminders” in
Chapter 6, Using the Personal Diabetes Manager, for
how to set the reminder.
Make sure your blood glucose is at least 5.6 mmol/L
before driving or working with dangerous machinery
or equipment. Hypoglycemia may cause you to lose
control of a car or dangerous equipment. Also, when
you focus intently on a task, you may miss the symp-
toms of hypoglycemia.
Periodically check the expiration date of your glucagon
kit to make sure it has not expired.
Always carry medical identification (emergency
wallet card) and wear an emergency medical neck-
lace or bracelet such as the Medic Alert tag. (See the
end of the Appendix for address, telephone and
website information for obtaining these items.)
Summary of Contents for OmniPod my life
Page 1: ......
Page 62: ...Using the Pod 49 5 Figure 5 13 Adult Front Back Figure 5 14 Youth Front Back ...
Page 186: ......
