I mentioned in an earlier post that going on the pump is not the silver bullet we sometimes imagine it to be. It definitely requires a lot of work, and more organisation than being on MDI that’s for sure (instead of just needles and vials you’ve got a whole new array of kit you need to carry around with you: insertion sets + devices, wipes, vials of insulin, reservoirs, lines, batteries etc etc).
This morning was case in point. My pump ran out of insulin completely just as I was running out the door. I’d taken my breakfast bolus and was planning to eat my breakfast on the way in in the car. My husband was driving me in this morning and he needed to be on time (and we were already running late because of me), so I had no choice but to grab all my kit and jump in the car. We live in a pretty hilly/curvy part of town and he was gunning it, so you can probably picture me with my needle in the vial of insulin trying to draw up the liquid into the reservoir as we went swinging around corners – it’s a wonder no-one lost an eye. There was toast and vials and packaging flying everywhere – then when I went to clip my pump back onto the site in my stomach and put the pump back in its pouch I realised I’d managed to wind the cord around the seatbelt. 15mins later and I could finally eat my breakfast! (Maybe it was more like ten, it felt like two hours :))
Posted in Insulin Pumps, Slice of Life
Tagged as driving
This post has 3 comments so far. Add yours here, or trackback from your own site.
3 comments have been made on this post
Jane wrote
I am the most disorganised person ever…… however, I get Novorapid in penfills, and I fill my cartridges all in advance. They sit in the fridge with the bubbles rising to the top, ready and waiting to be used. No Hassle
Nic wrote
That’s a great idea Jane. Only problem with me at the moment with being pregnant and needing preposterous amounts of insulin is that I’m re-using the cartridges so I need to wait til they’ve almost run dry.
Emma J wrote
I kept 2 or 3 cartridges filled in the fridge, but I still would have that problem. And I was always running out of replacement batteries (I suspect they got used for kids toys) With all the diabetes stuff you need to carry around I often wonder what other women need purses for. One thing I do is have emergency stashes around the place, so if I ever went to my box of infusion sets/cartridges/batteries/blood test strips and found it empty, I had at least one somewhere else (car/purse/suitcase). I even had a penfill in my purse – it keeps for 4 weeks outside the fridge, so I get a new one every month when I get my script repeat. And remember to keep a diabetes kit in your disaster kit – 3 days of food and water isn’t gonna help you if you haven’t got any insulin!!!