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!!!

News

Well, still pumping away and things are going really well. The past week has been pretty good, there have been a few surprising numbers (as always) but I am really getting the hang of it! Jamie and I were planning on going to the waterslides last weekend so I tried sticking my infusion set in my butt cheek so it could be hidden by my bathing suit.... We ended up not going, but the infusion set worked pretty well over the weekend. On Monday it ended up getting caught on the inside of my work pants and almost pulled out, but it's not bad for bumming around at home! Didn't feel the needle at ALL, I guess a little extra padding helps!

What else is new...? Well, I had a consultation for laser eye surgery this morning and I am officially booked in to get it! It will be amazing to not have to wear contacts every day! I was a little bit worried because my prescription has changed SLIGHTLY over the past few years, but they said I'm a great candidate and that my eyes should be all done changing now. The only thing that sucks is that I have to wear glasses for 2 weeks prior to the surgery so that my eyes aren't misshapen at all. Small price to pay in the long run though! I'm nervous about being a 4 eyes though, I'm shy about wearing my glasses in public! I'm going to have to wear them to my management summit at the end of the month too, so fun. I'm half considering dropping an extra $80 and just buying a new pair of glasses that I actually like, I feel like mine are just so nerdy!

Of course, with the laser eye surgery comes a pushback on the baby making plans. Apparently you can't be pregnant during the surgery (something to do with the eye drops..?) so we're not going to have a May due date! We could potentially try in October, but I'll be fertile and likely possibly conceiving about 5 days before the surgery and because I'll be taking the drops for about 4 weeks, I don't think it's a great idea to risk it. That's okay though, we have all the time in the world to make a baby, and time will go by fast. I was not looking forward to never seeing my baby during all those middle of the night feedings too, because I'm not putting in contacts for that! :)

Other than that... Life is going great! I'm excited to keep seeing the improvements in my blood, and I'm going to stay on top of it as much as possible. I like writing down everything because it makes it so much easier to detect trends. Very exciting stuff!

Until next time...

EzManager Max... Not so easy!!!

I can't believe it's Monday again, and it's time for my Dr's appt at Royal Columbian tomorrow morning already. Jamie and I spent some time writing down the past month of test results for my appt tomorrow (on their old sheets that look like they're from the early 80's) and after that was completed, I thought it would be a good idea to download my pump data as I hadn't done that yet. So I followed the instructions to 'disconnect and suspend the pump, without letting it fall asleep' and plugged in the dongle to my laptop.

The first try it seemed to have a pretty good connection so I was checking other websites as it sat there and downloaded, no big deal. I checked it after a little while and it was stuck at 76% for a good 5 minutes until the connection dropped and try 1 was offically a failure. Little bit frustrated as this was after a little over 10 minutes, but I tried again and it SLOWLY got up to 30-35% before it again stopped and I got the wonderful 'lost link' message again. After try 3 (very similar to try 2) I was about ready to throw this stupid thing off a bridge and go back to my good old shots. I am due for my period this week, so I am either very emotional and PMS'y, or I am feeling the rage hormones of early pregnancy. Either way, I wasn't a happy camper at this point. I had been disconnected for close to 45 minutes now and overall it wasn't a great situation. On try 4, I plugged it in and left the room careful to not walk too close and accidently shake the table and break the connection. Took about 15 minutes, but the download completed, finally! Downloading the meter itself was easy enough, and I was ready to obsess over my reports and see if there are any other patterns I hadn't yet noticed.

First thing that seemed a little bit odd, is that when I tried to generate the 'bolus vs basal' report, there was nothing there. I looked at the full log and noticed that almost half of my blood results are duplicated (one showing up at 9:00 and one showing up at 9:01 for example) and for whatever reason, it chose to not download ANY of my basal information. I am so frustrated, both with the technology itself, and the results. I thought I was doing so great, but now all I can see are 2's & 3's and 9's & 10's. I am just really having an 'off' day. It was funny though, when I was using the good ol' dongle, Jamie and I were talking about how SMART technology is nowadays, however us diabetes are stuck using crap like 'dongles' to download all of our info. Our iPhones can pour tic tacs from one phone to another, (virtually of course) and tell where the other one is at all moments, and play music and set up PVR recordings for that night in case I forgot to record it ahead of time, but it takes almost an hour for a week of basal/ bolus/ glucose data to download and form a report?

So. Frustrated.I think it's bedtime!

Sleeping in without guilt!

So life is pretty good! I have been hooked up to insulin for several days now and so far the transition isn't too bad. I've had a couple difficult moments, but with testing frequently, I am able to correct highs or lows before they really become issues.

I find I get kind of lazy with my diabetes during the weekend... During the week I am always 'on' and I am so careful with EVERYTHING and sometimes during the weekend I just don't feel like dealing with it quite as much as normal. I know it's not a great way to do things, but it happens. At least I can now sleep in without feeling guilty for missing my morning Lantus! I had a loose infusion set last night which wasn't too much fun. I put it in around 10PM and right before getting into bed at midnight I looked down and it just wasn't sticking right. Replaced it and the new one seems to be much better. It's funny how fast time goes by. You go on an insulin pump and it's great to 'not have to do shots' but I feel like my life will forever be managed in 3 day segments when I need to change my infusion site again.

Joys of diabetes...:) On a wonderful note, I had my bloodwork done on Thursday and my A1C is back down to 6.0!!!! Such awesome news. On a not so great note, my pump trainer kind of offended me when we were meeting last week. I was showing her my logbook and I had a 13.0 and a few lows in there and after I mentioned that I had a pretty good a1c, she said 'well those highs and lows you have contribute to a good 'average' number on your a1c'... I mean I do a really good job, but I have type one diabetes. It is impossible to be perfect. There will always be highs and lows. There isn't anything I can do to get rid of them completely, because my body will always do what it wants in the end. I can only play mind reader to my hormones so much.

Oh well, Dr's appt this week, we'll see how it goes! I'm expecting a pretty good one, I'm excited :)

Training Done

Well, I did my pump training today! It went pretty well, it was really a lot of what I already knew. The basal rate my Dr. gave me is pretty much exactly what I was guesstimating, so that makes me happy!

My blood is still being difficult today, so I'm hoping I can start using an increased basal in the future to help me out. I hate bouncing numbers so much.

Jamie did a full infusion set change for me today, which was so sweet! He needed a fair bit of instruction (of course) but he did it perfectly! I'm lucky to have him.

Basal rate goes into effect tomorrow morning, fingers crossed for a good transition, I am sooo nervous!!!