Saturday, June 22, 2013

No Delivery

I am praying to the diabetes Gods right now because I spent all night listening to the vibrations of my insulin pump telling me 'no delivery' every single time it gave me my basal insulin.  It started around 3 a.m when the vibrations went off and I knew it wasn't vibrations alerting low reservoir for two reasons, one, I just changed my site and two, it vibrated for a lot longer than the standard 'low reservoir alert.'
I rewound and primed the pump three times, checked my blood sugar and then gave myself a few units of insulin to cover the insulin that couldn't be delivered. I tried to go back to sleep, but was already annoyed with my insulin pump.  In the meantime, I called Medtronic, not about the issue, but about my late travel pump I haven't returned and I watched baby raccoons crawl up the tree outside my window... 

This morning before breakfast I tried to give myself 5 units of insulin to cover my oatmeal when half way through the bolus it started vibrating again. I then just changed my site because I knew I had down all of the other options listed on the pump besides check the manual.  After changing my site, which didn't even look damaged, I put a new one in, in a different location.   I gave myself once again the 5 units of insulin, I am going to watch my blood sugar just in case insulin was actually administered, and it was a successful bolus.

It's frustrating because we as diabetic depend on these things to work for us.  We all know though that technology isn't perfect, so many times the satellite dish stops working or our lap top crashes, but when it is your life on the line, that is a scary thing. We put all of our trust into these devices and when we are sleeping we trust that they will keep us alive much like our lungs for breathing.  

Kayla 

2 comments:

  1. That's one reason I still use a syringe. That and I cannot use warm insulin. It doesn't work for me. Warm insulin acts like it's gone bad. I'm sorry you're having problems. Hopefully things will get back to normal again.

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  2. Just an FYI: I find that Medtronic infusion sets can be the source of this error. Before I prime a set via the pump, I try a manual prime. A manual prime typically weeds out those bad infusion sets. If I cannot manually squeeze insulin through the line with the reservoir plunger, then I know it's a bad set. Medtronic is pretty good about replacing those bad sets.

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