Tag Archives: insulin pumps

Every picture tells a story.

July 21, 2014 – 9:37 am

 
 
#showmeyourpump
 
 
The Great Spousal Unit was away on Saturday, so I basically did what I usually do when she’s away on a Saturday: I got up early, had a couple of strong cups of coffee with breakfast, visited my favorite farm truck, came home, cleaned the house within an inch of its life, started the laundry, had lunch, Oh… she came home for about an hour and a half… and yes, absence DOES make the heart grow fonder… where was I… yes… I finished up, watered the plants and the gardens, picked up the dry cleaning, stopped in to say hello to my friends at my favorite local place (you know what I mean if you know what the number #147 means), and then I went home to make dinner.

The point is, the unsaid point of all this up to then, for me anyway, was this: I had seen so much bad news on the television this past week that I was happy to disconnect, turn it all off, and just concentrate on me and my happiness for a while. Simply put: The bad news from Ukraine, Gaza, and the anti-immigration factions in America (I think they’ve forgotten that they have descended from immigrants themselves) had me feeling so sad that I didn’t want to hear anything from anyone for a while.

Then I prepared dinner (and it was good– a recipe is in the near future here) and sat down to eat it. I pulled out my iPad, dialed up the Pandora (B.B. King channel), and proceeded to chow down. Some of my stress had gone away, but by no means had all of it dissipated.

Since the iPad was nearby, I started to check out my Twitter feed.

That’s when it happened.

I started to read post after post with the hashtag #showmeyourpump. Of course, this all started with Miss Idaho, who bravely (and why the hell NOT?) wears her insulin pump for the world to see, started to get some non-D world props on NPR and other outlets. I saw photos of people heading out for a run, people on the beach, having dinner, and living perfectly normal lives that just happen to include an external pancreas.
 
 
My reaction started with “Oh, that’s cool”, to “I love that… wouldn’t it be cool if that started trending?”, to something like this:

showmeyourpump

Once again, without even knowing it, the Diabetes Community pulled me up from a very sad, very unhappy place to a place where I was happy and optimistic, even proud that I wear my pancreas outside of my gut. And even though this has been trending for a few days now, even though I’m late to the party again, I can only say:
 
 
Thank you.

You will never know the extent to which you lifted my spirits.

I will support you through thick and thin, forever.
 
 
Thank you.
 
 

On my way to work this morning

On my way to work this morning


#shomeyourpump
 
 
 

By StephenS | Posted in Additional Inspiration | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)

What’s your fantasy dual-chamber pump hormone?

February 28, 2014 – 9:46 am

Related Post: What else do you want?
 
 
We still have about three more weeks of winter left here in the USA. I don’t know about you… but I could really use a healthy dose of Spring right now.

That has me thinking: I know that dual-chamber pumps have been in development for some time. I believe the idea is for one chamber to be able to pump insulin, and the other to pump glucagon. Or in some cases, the second chamber would pump amylin, which is a hormone designed to help us with gastric emptying.

So… what if I could just, at least for a little while, hook up a little Spring in my hypothetical, dual-chamber apparatus? Late Spring, just after you throw that coat off for the last time, but before it gets blazing hot. Change into your shorts after work, hang out on the back porch all night kind of Spring.

That would be very nice. What else would I like to have infused via my dual-chamber gadget?

Maybe something that could help take the edge off of remembering the depressing episodes of my life. I already lived them once. I don’t want to ever think about them again. Or relive them. Come to think of it, maybe Spring is the perfect antidote for that. Or serotonin. That might help me remember a few things that I seem to forget these days too.

But serotonin couldn’t give me the warmth that I’m looking for. So I’m still looking for Spring in a bottle vial reservoir.

I could certainly use something to motivate me to get to the gym at 5:30 a.m. I’m going, but I’m still dragging myself out of bed to get there. I don’t need anything like an amphetamine. I need something that will make me feel good about getting up and going, but not a performance enhancer.

And I would love something that would help me give exactly the perfect answer to every question, whether it’s diabetes-related or not. Aside from the confidence builder that would be, think of all the money I could make on Jeopardy! Though technically, the questions are answers on Jeopardy, and the questions are answers.

Where was I? Oh yes…

Those are just three things I thought of really fast (‘cause, you know, it’s Friday), that could be really great go-withs to infuse in a double-barreled insulin pump. What’s the fantasy hormone you’d like to include in yours?
 
 
 

By StephenS | Posted in Out Of the Box | Also tagged , | Comments (1)

I have questions.

January 6, 2014 – 7:36 pm

Even though we hear a lot about how Your Diabetes May Vary, there’s no denying the fact that many of us living with this chronic condition experience the same happenings. And those happenings make us ask things like:

– Why, when you have to do an emergency infusion set change, it’s when you’re ready to go to bed? This happened to me the other night, and it’s happened more than once… I sat on the bed and reached around for the TV remote so I could turn the set off. As I reached around, my thumb got stuck in just the right (or the wrong) place. In a flash, my set was ripped off and I needed a new one. I was already half asleep.

– While we’re at it, why do I always need a set change either first thing in the morning or last thing at night? Can’t these things be done in the middle of the afternoon on a weekend? All the time? Guess not.

– Why does a low make me stand in front of the refrigerator looking for the one item I love best? Should it be the orange juice or the cranberry? A granola bar or chocolate? Not “you’re low, just get the fast-acting carbs in”. More like, “what is the one perfect thing that I could have without feeling any guilt whatsoever?”.

– For those of us without a waterproof insulin pump, no worries… it’s easy to remember to disconnect before getting into the shower. Unless we really like having the pump and tubing dangling at our sides. But what can I do to remember to reconnect after the shower? ‘Cause I forget that a lot.

– Finally: How many more hours could I add to the end of my life if I didn’t have to run back into the house and get the meter I forgot when I walked out the door?

I know, I should just keep an extra meter in my truck all the time. Frankly, I’m just too cheap to buy another. So I find myself wondering why I don’t sometimes, as well as wondering why I can’t get a set change in at a convenient moment (like there is one), or why I rip out a site when I really want to sleep, and why I can’t remember to reconnect my pump right away after a shower or a swim. I’ll bet you ask one of these questions now and then too. Ask any others? Have any solutions? I’d love to hear them.
 
 
 

By StephenS | Posted in Diabetes | Also tagged , | Comments (18)

It happens to all of us.

October 21, 2013 – 4:49 pm

If you’re a pumper, chances are you’ve seen something like this before:

DSC01146

The story: I changed my set on Friday night, about 2 hours before bed. When I woke up in the morning, my #BGNow was 174 mg/dL. Higher than I would like, but I can deal with 174. I had a smaller-than-normal breakfast, and a fair amount of both coffee and water throughout the morning.

When I checked just before lunch, I was at 286 mg/dL. I was meeting a friend for lunch, and I just dealt with it… sometimes, new infusion sets just don’t seem to take right away. I had a very small lunch, enjoyed my time with my friend, and headed home.

Just before dinner, my BG test resulted in a 266 mg/dL. Okay, I’m getting some insulin, but something is clearly wrong at this point. What to do? Do an injection and wait it out some more? Or make the decision to change my set and start over?

I opted for changing my set, but not changing my tubing. If it was a bad cannula (pictured here) or a bad site, the tubing wouldn’t matter. If it was bad tubing, then a site change wouldn’t change anything, if you know what I mean. I’m the kind of guy who likes to know the cause of something, so I didn’t change the tubing, knowing I could do it later if I had to. As you can see in the photo, there was no need to because somehow the cannula got kinked. Which almost never happens to me, which is probably why I waited almost a day to change out the set.

After making the change, I did a correction bolus and ate a nearly carb-less meal. When I checked almost three hours later, I was at 84 mg/dL. Problem solved.

Just another annoying, stupid thing. Freakin’ diabetes.
 
 
 

By StephenS | Posted in Pumps | Also tagged , , | Comments (4)

Wounded. But tougher.

September 25, 2013 – 10:43 am

I don’t know why, but it occurred to me recently that People With Diabetes get wounded a lot. Not a shocker there. We are wounded daily on a physical basis, and wounded occasionally on an emotional basis. But either way you look at it, we’re wounded a lot:
 
 
– Wounded when we prick our fingers multiple times per day.

– Wounded when we inject ourselves with life-sustaining insulin.

– Wounded when we change out the infusion sets on our insulin pumps.

– Wounded when we change out the sensors for our continuous glucose monitor (CGM).

That seems like a lot right there. Our bodies are constantly poked, with various devices, to varying degrees, in the pursuit of perfect glucose nirvana. Oddly, better technology means getting jabbed more often than ever before. Any veteran PWD can show you multiple sites on their bodies where they can hardly remember what it looked like before their diabetes care forced a sort of self-mutilation. But I can keep going, and I’ll bet you can too:

– Wounded when we go to the doctor (usually multiple doctors) and blood is drawn for testing.

– Wounded if we fall into hypoglycemia and need to be revived by EMTs who start an IV with glucagon.
Here’s hoping this never happens to you.

– I’m wounded each time I donate blood and a large needle is inserted into my arm.
This is something I’m happy and proud to do, so I really don’t mind this one.
 
 
Then there’s the emotional side of diabetes. Unfortunately, many of us have experienced something like this:

– Wounded when someone asks “Can you eat that?”.

– Wounded when someone treats you like you’re responsible for your diabetes diagnosis.

– Wounded when the boss calls you in and says “What are we going to do to stop these low blood sugar episodes?”. Like a simple rewrite can avoid another installment of must-not-see TV at the office.

– Wounded when stubborn lows won’t come up and stubborn highs won’t come down.

– Wounded when our hemoglobin A1c number doesn’t reflect our expectations or how hard we’ve worked in the past three months.
 
 
I wouldn’t think of trading the better care (and much better awareness) of diabetes today for what it was like when I was diagnosed two decades ago. But there’s no denying the fact that better care and awareness (or lack of awareness) comes with additional punctures, both to our bodies and our hearts. Sometimes, the enormity of it all makes it difficult to imagine continuing in such a way. And yet sometimes, in a perverse kind of way, it seems to make us tougher. I like to think that with all of our holes, we’re even stronger than ever. I think I’ll cling to that today as I check my glucose and change my infusion set.

What about you? What wounds you today? What makes you tougher? Feel free to share your thoughts.
 
 
 

By StephenS | Posted in Diabetes | Also tagged , , | Comments (9)