Wednesday, June 5, 2013

One Month of Lucky

Well, I've had Lucky now since May 6th.

I've gotten used to his little quirks. Like the fact that he is sometimes noisier than my Medtronic pump was and sometimes quieter. I can actually hear him deliver little basal drips of insulin when I'm sitting at my desk. It's kinda cool because it is comforting to hear him working away, keeping me alive.

Other times I expect the boop-beep-boop noises that my old pump makes and Lucky just sits silently waiting for me to tell him what to do. Like when I'm changing my site and I rewind the pump so it's ready to take a new cartridge of insulin. After all the whirring noises are finished, I expect to hear boop-beep-boop but I hear nothing.

Being someone who dislikes loud noises of any kind, I'm grateful for the little things like peace and quiet.

On the other hand, I had gotten used to Medtronic's double warning system when my pump was running out of insulin. It would boop-beep-boop when I was down to 20 units and again when I was down to 10.

Lucky plays Fur Elise (which I still haven't learned to recognize as a warning sound and usually glance around looking for the source of the music) when I'm down to 20 units. There is only a single warning. On Monday afternoon, I got the warning. I acknowledged it and went about my business. I had dinner. I had a bedtime snack. I took a little bolus during the night to correct my 8.7. On Tuesday morning I woke up, went for my 30 minute run/walk, made breakfast, showered and dressed. As I was hooking back up again I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to change my pump. I look and saw that I was down to 2 units. Oops. That was close.

I'm also adjusting to having 100 less units of insulin in my pump. Which means I can only go about 4 1/2 days now instead of 6 between site changes. It's actually less annoying than I thought it would be but I am still finding myself surprised when I get the 'it's time to change your pump soon' warning. Already?!?

Lucky's sidekick glucometer is pretty cool and I often remote bolus with it even when Lucky is sitting right out in the open on my belt. That being said, I switched back to my Verio metre to use up some of the test strips I had bought for it and am finding that I don't miss the remote bolus feature at all when it's not an option. So I guess I can take it or leave it.

The bestest difference, hands down, that Lucky has made is at the pool. I knew that would be the case but I'm still so thrilled every time I get ready for my swim and I clip my pump to my suit rather than unhook it. It makes everything so much easier and for that reason alone I am grateful I made the switch to Animas.

2 comments:

  1. I know that you like having six days between site changes, but (believe me) your body will be happier. You'll get less scarring/pump-bumps by more frequent site rotation. You'll also get better insulin delivery because insulin actually starts to clog up your tubing the longer that you use the same set; I guess it sticks to plastic.

    Just so you know. :^)

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  2. My CDE friend told me that too Jeff. That it's not the insulin its the plastic in the tubing that degrades and clogs after 3 days. One would think (call me crazy) that they could just IMPROVE on the plastic so that doesn't happen.

    I used to change my sites 6-7 days too and when i switched to 3-4 I noticed better insulin absorption.

    Then again all of this could be irrelevant to Celine because by the sounds of it she didn't have those problems. Magic body I guess ;)

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