Friday Five: Diabetes

Jumping straight into another diabetes edition of Friday Five…

1. How can I be 58 and not feel it but the other day at 67, I was moving in slow motion and got my meter and lancet out but not my test strips?

2. I hate it when my lancet accidentally gets bumped from 2 to 4 and I don’t realize it until I’ve essentially hit bone.

2 = okay, 4 = stabbing bone

3. I confirmed with my doctor last week that the hard bump at an old infusion site is scar tissue. I have to give the site a break so my real estate has been decreased. One major drawbacks to being  “you’re skinny for a diabetic” (please stop that by the way folks, it’s completely wrong!) is that I can’t rotate infusion sites around my stomach because only 2-3 spots have enough meat to stick a canula in. It’s like being punished for staying in shape.

4. Bloody sites that still work are pretty disgusting, but I prefer them to the bloody sites that don’t work!

Vampire!

5. I have a pod spot in my kitchen. It’s where I put the failed pods that OmniPod asks for back. One pod will sit in that spot for 7-10 days until I receive the return kit (and replacement pod!). The spot will remain empty for a few days, maybe even a week… then I’ll have a new failed pod to put there. The most recent one, I wore for about 6 hours… it failed at 3:30 on a Monday morning. Ugh!

4 thoughts on “Friday Five: Diabetes

  1. I totally get what you’re referring to with number three. Not only is it “punishment” as you allude to, but it’s discouragement from exercise. Hitting muscle can be quite painful, and if I try to “bulk up” (I have a little desire, but no plans to do so), I’m essentially out of luck.

    Given you have a Pod-spot, how often do you find yourself returning pods to Insulet? I’ve heard of others who also complain of high problem-rates with them.

    • Glad I’m not alone in feeling that way! I have hit muscle a few times and ouch!

      Honestly, I should keep better track of how many I have to have replaced. The previous generation of pods were super susceptible to static and I had massive failure rates last winter. When they rolled out the new pods, I calculated for the first 3 months or so that 1 out of every 3 failed. I can say that since the first of the year, I’ve had 3 replaced so that’s better. It just takes awhile to get the replacement pods and return kit so I feel like I have dead pods sitting in the spot for a long time!

      They take most of my failed ones back so that the engineers can look at them and they can improve the new lots being produced. I trust them on that because of my shrinking failure rate. There were users overfilling pods or using cold insulin in them that I guess increases the risk of failure.

  2. Hi Rachel, I am a type 2 but I follow your blog which I love. I only had to wear a GCM for a weekend for testing and hats off to wearing it every day. It did hurt even on my stomach. I have read on sixuntilme.com website She has a pump that whe has put her infusion set on her thighs. Just a thought.
    Have a good day
    Larry

    • Thanks for reading Larry! Starting off with the Dexcom was a little rough but it’s seriously saved me on more than one occasion. I do rotate sites but I only have one spot for each site! As I type, my OmniPod is placed on my thigh and my Dexcom is on my hip/lowerback area.

      Do you happen to know which CGM you wore?

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