Hands up for insulin suppositories!

6 November 2008
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Ahem – I suppose ‘hands up’ might be a little too close to the bone on this subject. I saw this article a few days ago, and to be honest it didn’t really fill me with joy quite like the announcement about inhalable insulin a few years ago.

Apparently insulin suppositories are an area being explored for young children and older patients, who have trouble with injections. Which I suppose counts me out of the target market entirely. But I have to say – the improvements with diabetes which excite me are the ones which bring my life closer to the everyday person’s, not something which would see me having to run off to…

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By Nic on 6 November 2008 at 9.48 pm
Posted in Science & Research
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Oh deary me – so THAT’s what happens.

4 November 2008
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I came across this article recently and while it sounds like a particularly horrible thing to have happen (to summarise: a school nurse injected five teachers with insulin instead of a flu vaccine), it did answer a question I’ve pondered a few times – what happens if a non-diabetic gets injected with insulin?

I guess this answers it – if it’s a small amount, even if it’s intravenous – it will not kill said non-diabetic. I always assumed it would be close. You’d have to eat a pretty big handful of jelly snakes to get yourself out of that one I’m thinking!

(What has sparked this thought before is when people do that little joke with you…

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By Nic on 4 November 2008 at 9.00 pm
Posted in Medical Services
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Insulin smash ‘n grab.

5 October 2008
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I saw this article come across the wire the other day and thought I’d sit down and read it properly over the weekend:

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=65390&catid=2

To summarise: a guy put a molotov cocktail under a woman’s car in Knoxville, Tennessee in order to send her car up in flames, create a diversion for the police and rob a pharmacy across town. Police assume he was after what was in the locked cabinet in the pharmacy (narcotics), but when he failed to get into this, he made a getaway with a tote bag of insulin.

If you read the article, then the comments underneath, there seems to be varying opinion. The police think the thief was after narcotics and would have been…

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By Nic on 5 October 2008 at 3.19 pm
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Running on empty.

29 August 2008
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It takes a little bit of getting used to, this pump business. On MDI (multiple daily injections) you can’t help but see how much insulin you have left in the vial because you are looking at it every time you inject.

However, on the pump you don’t look so much. The cartridge is round the side, at the back – you’re always looking at the screen as you navigate through all of the programming options. Which is not to say you don’t have full visibility at all times regarding how much there is left in the cartridge – there’s a display on the home screen indicating how many units you have left, and how much battery power you have…

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By Nic on 29 August 2008 at 8.28 am
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It was a dark and stormy night…

27 July 2008
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So on Friday the news was all about this massive storm which was due to hit the North Island… Apparently the biggest in 10 years. Hmmm. Seemed pretty unbelieveable with the lovely day we had on Fri, and after working about 60 hours in five days, the last thing I wanted to do was head to the shops to stock up on candles etc (we are in the middle of making our way through the last season of the Sopranos…it’s important to have goals).

Saturday came and we kept an eye on the weather. It was raining very heavily (but we DO live in Auckland) and the wind got pretty high but by 2pm we were still pretty skeptical of…

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By Nic on 27 July 2008 at 10.31 am
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