My pump had a bad day today and when it's having a bad day I get upset because I tend not to function very well without it attached to me! The screen just started fading out on me after dinner tonight. Never had this problem before, so I called Animas and they are sending out another overnight. It had been doing better tonight, but it will occasionally fade out when I'm trying to do something on it. I also need to get a new bottle of Lantus, since my current one expired five days ago. So going on Lantus wasn't really an option, unless I wanted to risk it and end up getting high blood sugar readings when it runs out (one shot of Lantus can act as my pump would---for 24 hours; the problem with expired or older Lantus is that is doesn't work for the full 24 hours). As for the other issue...I just changed my
infusion set on Monday and ever since then the site had been extremely painful when it shoots the insulin in during a
bolus. And the first bolus I took after the site change, I get an occlusion alarm and this often occurs when the
cannula is bent or there is a blockage in the cannula or tubing. Not wanting to change it, I just tried the bolus again and it went through fine. Well needless to say throughout the past two days I've had a few occlusion alarms go off, but my blood sugars have been very good so I figured the insulin must be getting in fine so I would just deal with the pain upon bolusing because my least favorite part of being on the insulin pump is changing the infusion set. I'll refer you to
this article and
this one too about the occasional pain that infusion sets can cause. I feel like I could have wrote those myself! So tonight, I'd had enough pain and occlusion alarms, so I took the infusion set out and went for a run and my blood sugar was 105 when I was done running! Perfect! As for the nasty infusion set...
Yes, I now know what the problem was...looks like the cannula had a bit of a kink in it. Not sure what all the pain was from though, because usually bent or kinked cannulas only cause problems with insulin delivery and don't cause a significant amount of pain. I'm just glad to have that stupid thing out of me and feel free for a little bit tonight!
