Fast Acting Insulins Too Slow -- HELP!

My spouse has had Type I diabetes for 25 years. He's always fought to maintain good control. The last couple of years it's gotten harder and harder. Recently he's gotten a Dexcom CGMS which has given us all kinds of information but no solutions.

He uses Lantus and with the help of the Dexcom we've figured out it's action and been able to come up with pretty good dosing that seems to work.

The problem is the rapid acting insulin. He's tried Novolog and Apidra. With both of them they take WAY longer to act than they are "supposed" to. Instead of peaking after one hour, they seem to do little until after about 3 hours and then gradually bring the insulin down over another couple of hours. Needless to say this means way high sugars after meals. Increasing the dose just means a low at the tail end of the action. So far we've tried: Different injection sites, different needle lengths, massaging the injection site, switching from Novolog to Apidra, and finally taking his insulin an hour plus before he eats. The only thing that makes somewhat of a difference is taking the insulin way before the meals. Needless to say his is not a good solution. He has to guess or decide what he's going to eat way in advance and has to know when he'll be eating. Shades of the days using "Regular".

He does have quite a lot of fat on his abdomen which could be a factor (hence the longer needles). We don't think he has tissue damage from long years of insulin use that might slow down absorption because there are none of the signs of it (dimpling, lumpy tissue) and because his doctor examined him and didn't see any signs of it.

So we're lost. Anybody else have this problem? Any solutions? We've scoured the web and tried everything we can think of. Thanks for listening.

[lisa_ann1234]

hi:
I've gone through similar reactions with novolog and lantus.  Lantus seems to keep my sugar levels very high regardless of what dose I take .  novolog for seems to react only if I take after eating.  I had to try and see what work for me and then explain to my doctor how I got it to work.  I agree it seems like it gets harder and harder each time