Diabetes & Byetta

Hi all,

I was one of the members of the list at the very beginning - not all
that long ago - but left when my doctor and I decided to try symlin.
Well, that two month experiment last fall wasn’t a success, and after
a couple of months and an a1c that rose to 7 from 6.4, we decided to
try byetta. I’ve finished about ten days on the 5mcg dose. In many
ways it’s like symlin, but if I’m careful with my dinner carbs -
sticking to veggies and salad and a sugar free ice cream bar for
dessert, my BG goes down or hovers in the 80s or 90s for the rest of
the night and I wake up with a decent number. I do have to be a bit
careful of going low at times, though.

About me: I was diagnosed type 2 in 11/03, put on glucatrol and
metformin, then also avandia. Went on insulin in 6/04 by choice as

control floundered after shoulder surgery. Gave up avandia because
of swelling and weight gain. Saw an insulin pump at a diabetes expo
and decided that was for me, and started that journey in 11/04. Got
the pump in 2/05, and I love it and would never give it up willingly.

My control has never been awful, but I deal with a very very strong
dawn phenomenon that the pump has helped with tremendously - it
allows me to set a much higher basal/background rate for the hours
between 4:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. Using byetta in the morning hasn’t
done much to lower BG, but it keeps it steady with my breakfast of
either a yoplait light yogurt smoothie or a 1/3 cup of all bran bran
buds (very high fiber but not so many carbs) with a few berries.

I go back to the doctor in another ten days for follow up on
starting the byetta and to increase to 10 mcg. I may then have to
fine tune my basal/background rates to cope with the increased dose.

So far, no side effects that I’ve noticed. I did have one day of the
runs, the next day after starting byetta, but that may have been from
food, as it stopped and hasn’t come back, thankfully.

The only thing I wonder is whether the byetta is causing me to have
and remember strange dreams - really nightmares. Anyone else?

Stacey

This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2003 at 1:32 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.