One day, step by step

Everything TalkT1 does, in the order a school day needs it. Every reply is what TalkT1 really says, and every number shows its working.

1. 07:40

   Breakfast, photographed

   Each line carries where its number came from. Chosen by the assistant is the one to read twice — it means nothing here recognised the food and the model picked a row, so the total is only as good as that pick. A figure whose source cannot be named is not offered at all.

   prepare breakfast for liama photo of the plate

   Estimate the carbs in a weighed meal

   Two Weetabix with milk, and half a banana. Weetabix comes from your own list; the other two I looked up, and I picked the banana row myself:

   Weetabix2 biscuits × 12.0 g each (your list)24.0 g

   Whole milk120 g × 4.7 g carbs/100 g (USDA)5.6 g

   Banana60 g × 22.8 g carbs/100 g (USDA, chosen by the assistant)13.7 g

   Totalfrom 216 g of food43.3 g
2. 07:41

   The link, and the first press

   That press sends the carbs and asks Loop for a recommendation. It delivers no insulin, and it is the only way to get one, which is why a second, separate press is what follows.

   Prepare a meal

   The meal’s ready to review, not yet sent: 43.3 g carbs, absorbing over 3 hours.

   talkt1.com/meal/9pQ2r4kSxLbN7vHc3TmWuE6yFdAjZg1o

   43.3 g for Liam

   Nothing has been sent yet. Sending the carbs is what lets Loop work out the dose — it is the only way to get a recommendation, and it cannot be undone from here.

   Glucose now138 mg/dL · rising

   Insulin on board0.85 u

   Carbs on board6 g

   Reading age3 min old

   Send 43.3 g to Loop

   This sends the 43.3 g to Liam’s Loop now, then asks Loop what it would dose. No insulin is delivered by this button.

3. 07:42

   The second press

   The figure is Loop’s, worked out on Liam’s own settings after the carbs landed, and the page says so rather than letting it be mistaken for ours. It can be changed, in which case the record says the number was yours. Neither press can happen twice, however many times the link is opened, and Finish without insulin is a real answer that closes the meal.

   carbs logged

   Loop recommends 1.15 u

   Loop calculated this from Liam’s carb ratio, sensitivity, target, insulin on board and its glucose forecast — after this meal was logged, at 07:42. TalkT1 did not work it out.

   loop’s recommendation

   1.15u

   Change it if you have a reason to. What is sent is what is in the box, and the record will say the number was yours rather than Loop’s.

   Deliver bolus

   Finish without insulin

   Ceiling in force: 4 u, the lower of this connection’s limit and Loop’s own maximum bolus. Anything above it is refused here rather than discarded on the phone.

4. 10:15

   High, and he has not eaten

   A correction is the thinner case: there is no meal in front of it, so one press is all that stands between the link and insulin. That is why the link expires in half an hour — not for tidiness, but because “he needs a correction” stops being a true sentence about a child fairly fast.

   liam’s 240 and hasn’t eaten. correction?

   Prepare a correction

   Nothing has been sent — not insulin, and there are no carbs in a correction. A correction link for Liam is live now and lasts 30 minutes.

   talkt1.com/correction/Kd8sT2xQ7bVnR4mLpW9yUc3ZhA6eGf1j

   Opening it shows Liam’s live glucose with insulin and carbs on board, and Loop’s own correction recommendation, which one press delivers. Loop may well recommend no insulin at all — that is an answer, not a failure.

5. 12:30

   Lunch, at school, without you

   The food still has to be weighed or counted — a meal going somewhere else is not a meal that gets priced more loosely. What changes is where the link goes: say the timing in the same breath and it is emailed to the whole care circle at that time instead of coming back in the chat, so whoever is with him can be the one to press it. “Lunchtime” is not a guess about when people eat — it is read off the meal times you set in Settings, and until you have set them it says so rather than inventing one.

   prepare liam’s lunch at lunchtime — 105g ham sandwich, 90g satsuma, 25g crisps

   Estimate the carbs in a weighed meal

   Ham sandwich105 g × 22.9 g carbs/100 g (your list)24.0 g

   Satsuma90 g × 11.4 g carbs/100 g (USDA)10.3 g

   Crisps25 g × 53.2 g carbs/100 g (USDA)13.3 g

   Totalfrom 220 g of food47.6 g

   yep, that’s right

   Prepare a meal

   Ready to review, not yet sent: 47.6 g carbs. “At lunchtime” matched the lunch entry in your meal times, so it is scheduled for 12:30 today. Everyone in the care circle gets the link by email then; nothing happens before.

6. 12:31

   And the school nurse knows

   Texts go out from your own number, through Messages on your Mac, to a person or a group you set up on the Texts page — and in the words of a template you wrote, so it reads like you. It is shown before it is queued, it can be changed or cancelled until your Mac picks it up, and the Texts page says Sent from Messages only once Messages has confirmed it. A text carries food and carbs, never insulin.

   Also asktext the nurse that the spare sensor is in his backpackmove the nurse text to 11:30cancel tomorrow’s nurse text

   text that to the nurse group at 11:45

   Preview a text

   For the Nurse group — one group chat with Kim and Pat — at 11:45 AM, from your number. Nothing queued yet:

   “Good morning. Lunch is 48 g today. Ham sandwich, Satsuma, Crisps”

   yes

   Queue a previewed text

   Queued, not sent yet. Your Mac sends it at 11:45 through Messages, from your own number.

7. 17:00

   A food no database has

   It will not quietly add a second row that looks like one you already have, and it will not quietly overwrite the old one either. Both are guesses about which food you meant, and the cost of guessing wrong is every future meal priced off the wrong bar.

   Also askwhat’s in our list for pizza?change nan’s flapjack to 34 gtake the old flapjack off our list

   nan’s flapjack — 32g of carbs in one bar. add it to our list

   Add or change one of this care circle’s carb entries

   “Nan’s flapjack” looks like something already in the table:
   — Flapjack — 1 bar = 28 g carbs — the same food, worded differently
   
   Is yours a different food, or did you mean that one?

   different — hers has way more syrup

   Saved. Nan’s flapjack — 1 bar = 32 g carbs. It will price meals from now on.

8. All day

   Nobody asks it anything

   It reads Liam’s readings as they arrive, from the moment a Nightscout connection and a timezone are set. There is nothing to remember to do.

   A note on every high and lowWhat happened, and the likely cause.

   Patterns it watchesLows and highs that repeat become observations, which strengthen or fade over the days.

   A suggestion, when the evidence holdsOnly an observation that has held up can lead to one. Most days there is none.
9. 08:05

   The daily digest

   Nobody has to ask. Each morning the digest says what the review found, and suggests a change only when the data points to one. When that is a setting, it names the setting, what it is now, the one step to take and the taps in Loop — one step at a time, then a week to see it. When it is waiting on something, it says what, and when it has nothing to say, the subject line says that instead.

   Liam · 2 things to look at

   Worth watching: a rise after the evening meal on 6 of 14 days.

   Do this: bolus the 18:00 meal about 15 minutes before eating, every time, for a week. If the rise is still there with the bolus ahead of the food, the carb ratio is the next thing.

   Also: fasting glucose drifts up between 02:00 and 05:00 — the basal change for it is waiting, because the last one was four days ago.

10. 08:20

    The next morning

    What it withheld is reported as carefully as what it found. A withheld finding and no finding are different states, and only one of them means all clear — so a review that stayed quiet about its own silence would be the most misleading thing on the page.

    Also askhow did yesterday go?what happened after lunch on tuesday?what’s his time in range been?

    how did last night look?

    Read the latest settings review

    Over 14 days: in range 68% (target 70–180 mg/dL), mean 154 mg/dL, CGM covering 96% of the window.

    2 findings.
    — act — fasting glucose drifts up between 02:00 and 05:00
    — watch — a rise after the evening meal on 6 of 14 days

    Withheld (1), with the reason.
    — An overnight basal suggestion — the last change to that setting was four days ago, which is too recent to judge.

11. 08:21

    Why do you say that?

    Which source a claim rests on is part of the answer rather than decoration, so the ranking is stated and a source that disagrees is shown rather than dropped. When the review finds something to change, it names the setting, what it is now, the one step to take and the taps in Loop — and nothing changes until you make the change yourself. It is still your decision, with your clinician.

    why do you say that about the overnight drift?

    Explain the review’s findings, with their sources

    It rests on 11 of the 14 nights, each with CGM coverage above 90%. Sources, in the order this system ranks them:

    1. Loop documentation — overnight basal is assessed against fasting drift
    2. Liam’s own data — a mean rise of 31 mg/dL between 02:00 and 05:00
    3. Paediatric guidance — on reviewing basal before ratios

    Lower-ranked sources that answer differently:
    — One guideline treats this window as too noisy to act on in children under 12.

12. A week on

    Did it help?

    You change settings in Loop, as always. Loop uploads the new profile to Nightscout, the nightly review notices on its own, and from then on it measures the same thing the suggestion was based on, before and after. If you did something Loop cannot show — a habit, a new site location, a talk with your clinician — say so and it goes on the record the same way. It never says a change worked until the measurement does.

    Also askwe started bolusing 15 minutes before dinnerwhat’s still open from the review?what did we change last month?

    did raising the correction range help?

    List open suggestions and what was acted on

    Correction range, 100–115 → 110–125 — seen in Nightscout on Tuesday, so nobody had to tell me.

    Corrections that ended in a low: 5 in the 14 days before, 1 in the 7 days since. Too early to call it settled; the review keeps measuring.