It's HERE!!!!

It's here it's here it's here! My pump (and boxes of supplies) arrived at my office around 10:30 AM, which was amazingly fast! I was hoping for it to come today but didn't have my fingers crossed at all. But here it came, bright and early this morning!

All of the supplies are great, I have way more stuff than I will ever use. I still haven't heard from my trainer, so I have taken it upon myself to learn how to figure out my basal rates on my own. I called and left a message for both of my Dr's but hadn't heard back and I figure I don't need to wait for the formal training... I know the basics, I know HOW it works and what to do, I really only want the training to see if there are any special features of the pump I am not aware of.

Anthony had told me to take my normal 'basal' rate of Lantus and cut it to 80% and spread that out over my day... That worked out to 24U a day, so a simple 1U/hour.... I decided to cut that down slightly overnight (at least for tonight) so that I don't end up low all night long. I am ready to test every 2 hours overnight though, I'm not expecting too much sleep! So I am on 1U/hour from 8AM-10:30PM and .90U/hour from 10:30PM-8AM... We'll see how it goes and adjust from there. I'm sure my Dr will call tomorrow with an idea of where to start, but I think I have a good jumping off point here.

Frustrations of the day...

First, I noticed that the pump screen seems to be 'off' a little bit... Almost like it was placed too far to the left.

So I put that aside (for then) and focused on just learning about the meter remote. I'm still not crazy about 1 touch strips (and having to get enough blood the first try, every try) but I am getting used to them! I actually really like the poker they gave me, I barely feel it at all, I can even test on my pointer fingers, which I usually HATE testing on! I don't like the case they give you for the meter remote, because it's all plasticy feeling, there isn't a good spot to put my log book, and it doesn't fit the meter when it's wearing a skin. After dinner I went to Walmart and found a little pink and brown makeup case to put everything in, and that is working wonderfully so far, I am pretty happy with it!

I called Animas earlier in the day about the screen issue and had a callback within a couple hours, not bad at all. The lady was great and said she'd forward my complaint on to Animas Canada and they would arrange to ship a new pump to me. I hate feeling like I'm 'complaining' but I mean I JUST got the thing, and I can't stop staring at the fact that the screen is off kilter. Although now I'm staring at the screen and can't see it at all, of course. Speaking of the screen, luckily they send out the pump with a screen protecter, because somehow I've already put a huge dent in the screen protector, no idea how! I also had one hell of a time getting in an infusion set, it did take me 3 tries... The first one wouldn't go in, no matter what I pressed on the inset thingy, so I said that it must be defective and threw it out... The second one I tried and tried and tried and eventuallly thought that something must be wrong with the box. I loaded up a third from another box and started dialing Animas... I tried with the 3rd and realized that I was pressing the wrong spot on the inserter, OOOPS. I'm pretty sure I tried both on the first infusion set, but who knows. I felt kinda dumb, I had been texting Jamie expressing my FRUSTRATIONS at how STUPID it was being for not working, when I was just being an idiot. Oh well! :)

Overall, I'm pretty excited. I'm looking forward to talking to my Dr or at least a trainer to make sure I'm doing things right, and getting through reading all this stuff that they sent me. I have my 'pump drawers' all organized and full so that's great, I HATE being unorganized!

I'll update again soon, once I am more into the swing of things, but I am so excited! I can't wait until I am a master of this thing, and that will come shortly. It's still so new to me though, but I'm figuring it out.