Forgetting to take insulin can happen to the best of us and is one of the most common reasons for missing an insulin dose.
We provide some tips to help you remember to inject as well as providing a number of solutions to help prevent situations whereby you can’t remember if an injection was given or not.
Some common reasons for forgetting to take insulin include:
- Being stressed
- Being busy
- Being distracted
Tips to help with remembering to take insulin
One reason for missing injections can be if you are letting areas of your life take priority over your diabetes.
It’s important that your diabetes comes first when it comes to injecting and monitoring your blood glucose levels
By injecting at the right time, you’ll save yourself a lot of stress which happens if an injection is forgotten.
Some general tips for remembering to inject include:
- Don’t allow yourself to get distracted
- Focus on the injection
- Set an injection alarm
- Don’t put off your injection
- Don’t get engage in conversation or perform another task when you are injecting
I can’t remember whether or not I injected?
Many people on insulin report problems of not remembering whether or not they took an injection.
This can lead to a dangerous quandary – do you inject and risk injecting twice, putting yourself at risk of severe hypoglycemia Or, do you not inject and risk missing out having injected at all, which could lead to high blood glucose levels.
In this situation, it is likely to be more dangerous if you inject twice. It is better to hold off on injecting and monitor your blood glucose levels every 30 minutes.
If your blood glucose levels become too high, it could indicate that you have not injected.
If you are at all unsure how to manage the situation, contact your health team or out of hours service, who will be able to advise you.
Solutions to help remember whether an injection has been taken
As noted above, it is relatively common for people to have situations whereby they don’t know for sure whether they injected or not and so a number of companies have developed solutions to combat the problem.
InsulCheck
InsulCheck provides a clock which sits next to the dial of your insulin pen that counts how long ago the dial of your insulin pen was last changed and therefore can give an indication of how long ago the insulin pen may have been used.
InsulCheck can be fitted to all of the main insulin pens – including both reusable and non-reusable pens.
