Last night at dinner, I noticed a drop of insulin still on the needle after his Novolog injection, and dampness around the injection site. We keep the needle in until a count of eight after the injection, which is supposed to prevent such things.
This time, though, it clearly wasn't effective, and Karl's blood sugar shot up to over 200, meaning that a whole unit had been lost, at least.
We're using the Novopen Junior insulin pen and BD 4mm nano needles and haven't seen this problem before. The instructions for the nano needles say, "Don't pinch the injection site," but Karl wants us to (it's how we were taught to give injections), so we still do. Arguing with an autistic kid is hard work, so we do things Karl's way when it seems okay to do so.
I wonder if the pinch is actually counter-productive with short needles? I wonder if there's a protocol for dealing with a seemingly messed-up injection like this? Estimating the loss seems like a difficult task.
A one-unit corrective dose got him headed in the right direction, though of course these never have the instant effect you'd like.
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