Batteries and Infusion Sites

Wow, time is really flying by! I am less than a week away from no more contacts! I have to wear my glasses (boo) for two weeks, and then it's pre-op and operation (assuming everything looks good in the pre-op of course). My Mom and I are enrolled in some wonderful running a couple days after the surgery as well. She's doing a full marathon (impressive!) and I'm doing an 8km run at the same time, because I'd feel lazy just standing around for 5-6 hours waiting for her to finish... I called the Lasik clinic and they said as long as I don't sweat into my eyeballs, I should be just fine for the run.

I had a little bit of a battery issue with my pump over the weekend... My battery was showing as completely full until late Friday afternoon, when it dropped to 2/3's. I figured I'd get about another 5 days out of it and didn't think anything of it. On Saturday after we got in around 10:45 my pump all of the sudden alarmed and said that the battery was low and to change now. I figured it was just getting a little ahead of itself and decided I'd deal with it the next day. I mean it had JUST gone to 2/3, surely I'd be able to get a few more days out of it. Not the case, Jamie woke me up at 3:30 because my pump was alarming its face off. Luckily he's a light sleeper because there is no way that would wake me up. Anyways, in a sleepy stupor I tried seeing what was going on with the silly thing and the screen is BLACK. I can't touch anything, and the alarm will NOT shut up. I don't know if my basal was still continuing or what. I went downstairs and changed out the battery (thank god I had some double A's sitting around!) and went back to bed, none too pleased. I got 4 weeks out of the battery, so that's not a big problem, but I really do not like that it just died within 36 hours, when it had been showing as completely full. My meter remote is a little bit sketchy too. The battery was showing as 2/3 on some screens and fully charged on some other screens. It started giving me 'change battery' messages, which I ignored initially because the screens still showed as fully charged. After getting the message 3 times (and still getting 2/3 or 3/3 on the screens) I bit the bullet and changed the batteries. I got the change battery screen about 4 hours after changing them, so I have no idea why that came up, as they are brand new batteries. Since then everything looks okay, but I am not happy with these battery issues. I'll see how it goes with what's in there right now and if it drops drastically again, I'm calling tech support. What if I wasn't home? It only gave me 3 hours before my pump was completly 100% not responding at all dead. That is unbelievable, and pretty dangerous if you ask me.

Other thing on my mind is placement of the infusion sets. I love my 'side' areas the best, on my love handles (haha) and my side-stomach essentially. I switch left-front, right-front, left-back, right-back each time. I have the most trouble with areas that tend to bend when I sit down. I put one in today and the adhesive kind of crinkles almost where my skin seems to be bending. I hope it sticks in there well, because I'm worried about it just peeling up. I would use pretty much the exact same spots every time, but I don't want to get any scar tissue. So far my sites look great (can only really see a tiny dot and only for a day or so after) but I'm just worried.

bah, stressful.

oooh, forgot to mention!

I must talk about our latest diabetes accident in the home!

Jamie was kind enough to help me change my infusion set last week, and he was pumping air in and out of the cartridge to lube it up before filling it with insulin. I was just walking over to tell him I didn't quite need the cartridge filled when all of the sudden there was a yelp and a LOT of blood... He was dripping blood all over the floor, it was pooling in his palm, it was pretty gruesome! Turns out when he was pulling air in, he somehow popped off the needle cap, and when he was pumping air out, he went through his ring finger and into his middle finger.

Yuck. I had done that about 3-4 years into pumping back in the day, so I figured something similar would happen again one day, but not so soon, and not to Jamie!! Poor hubby :(

Luckily, he's all healed now, and at least it was a nice brand new sterile needle! I wonder what the next diabetic injury will be... I haven't pulled out an infusion set on a door handle yet, I'm thinking that's next on the list!

Oh insurance...

Finally I got that letter from Standard Life today... I could finally pay my Mom back for the pump, which she was nice enough to put on her Credit Card. I sent everything in probably 2 weeks ago... Today I open the envelope and a big fat "DENIED" written on the page. They even issued me a cheque for $0!!! Written on there it says that they need proof of payment, and that 'it isn't their policy to issue cheques directly to the vendor' something along those lines.

Now what I don't understand, is how my invoice with 'prepaid in full by visa' doesn't count as proof of payment. Bah, so annoyed. Hopefully I can call them tomorrow and they will open their eyes and realize that I DID send proof of payment. Or else Animas sent me the wrong receipt, which would be a whole other can of worms. I'm still waiting to hear back from them about ordering supplies, it's been close to a month I've been waiting for the girl to call me back. I've called and spoken to THREE other people as well who said they would get me an answer ASAP and still nothing.

I'm really hoping this isn't something I should expect from Animas in the future, and I get this all sorted out soon.

Other than that, life is good! I accidently disconnected my pump in my sleep Saturday night, so I ran high pretty much all Sunday morning... No idea how I disconnected overnight, I've never done that before! Other than that, my bloods been pretty good. I'm taking it a little bit more easy, because we've put off TTC for a few more months, but we'll see.

PS: ONE month til laser eye surgery!!!! Can't wait!!!