Insulin Pump Injection Site Update

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

When I moved my insulin pump a couple of days ago, I stuck it in my belly fat, and my insulin usage went straight up like 80 units per day. It looks like picking a spot that doesn’t have 31 years of needle scar tissue, along with picking a low fat spot, really reduces the insulin that is needed to do the job. Some young Doc needs to do a study on that….

Tags: Insulin Pumps, Insulin Usage
Posted in Insulin Pumps | No Comments »

Rethinking Your Insulin Injection Spot

Monday, December 14th, 2009

I put my insulin pump back on the other day, after about a year without it, and had a couple of surprises. The first was that I forgot how the thing worked, the second was that I’ve had it for 4 years and the manual was still in the shrink wrap, the third was that there are bolus settings called “Square” and “Dual” and the fourth was that where you stick the needle makes a huge difference in the amount of insulin you need.

I decided to put my pump back on because my last two A1C’s have been pure crap, coming in at 7.1 and 7.2. I’ve never had an A1C over 6.2 before, and now I have 6 months of really poor blood sugar control that needs fixing, now! So, I dug out my pump, found a battery for it, and got it all set up and plugged into my side. What was interesting, was that I stuck in into my side so far over, that I had to have my wife tape down the cannula, because I couldn’t reach the site with both hands.

The site where I stuck it was also on a thin part of my side, where I don’t have any belly fat, so I basically stuck the sucker in my kidney or liver or what have you… It hurt like hell, and I had to hold my breath and try not to wriggle until it was taped down. Most of the pain went away when I pulled out the 8 foot long needle they use down the center of the cannula to get it to poke through your skin (called a trocar), and I’m pretty sure my liver and kidney will be fine with time.

Well, the pump still had it’s settings, and I remembered that I had cut the basal rate in half, in an attempt to use Lantus for half the basal, to cut down on the massive amount of insulin I was dumping through the cannula. I figured by using Lantus for 30 units per day of my basal, that was almost 100 units of insulin that wouldn’t go through that site. (If you dump a whole bunch of insulin into one hole, then you get an infection a lot faster.)

Well, I almost immediately started having insulin reactions, and over the next three days, I cut my daily insulin to around 50 units of insulin per day, and that was eating a 2750 calorie diet composed of around 30% carbs. That was a drop of around 100 units per day for me.

Part of the drop in my insulin needs was do to the fact that since I eat lots of protein and fat, my blood sugars peak after my insulin has been used or destroyed by my body. Well, since I read the book when I put the pump on this time, I read about dual wave and square wave patterns of giving insulin.

With a dual wave, you give part of it right now to cover any sugar spike, then you set the rest of the insulin to slowly be released over the next 1/2 hour to 8 hours. So, if I ate a bunch of dark chocolate, I could take a little bit of insulin now, and then set the rest to be dripped over the next two or three hours. that way the fast sugar is covered, as is the rest of the sugar as your body pulls it out of the fat…

The square wave is just the second part of a dual wave release. You can just set the insulin to be released evenly over a set amount of time. The square wave works good for meats and fats that give up their carbs slowly, or for people who have Gastroparesis.

So, between sticking the needle into my side, where there wasn’t any belly fat to slow down insulin uptake, and setting my insulin releases using the dual wave and square wave releases, instead of just dumping it all in my body and hoping the food and the insulin would both show up at the same place at the same time, I reduced my daily insulin usage by 100 units.

Tags: increase insulin sensitivity, Insulin Pumps, reducing insulin use
Posted in Insulin Pumps, Type 1 Diabetes | No Comments »

Insulin Pumps & Insulin Resistant Diabetics

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

The reason I don’t use a pump very often is because I’m insulin resistant. When I got my first pump in the 90’s, I was supposed to take 1 unit of insulin for every 2 carbs I ate. Since they don’t have any pumps that you can dial down that tight, I had to do the math before I took any insulin. It was a pain in the butt.

But worse, were the nasty infections in my belly. I know that I said that you could use insulin as a topical ointment for wound care, but when you try to pump 600 units of insulin into the same hole in 3 days, you can count on ending up with a nasty infection.

So, I tried using the insulin pump for basil stability only, and used a needle for boluses after eating. This actually worked pretty good, but there were still infections from time to time. But, putting 150 units through the tube, was way less stressfull on my body that pumping 600 units throug in the same 3 day period.

What I’m doing now is using Lantis, AKA the poor man’s insulin pump. Lantis is a 24 hour insulin that can give you pretty good daily control. You just take it once every 24 hours. lantis has done a great job of keeping my blood sugars under control without infections and the added expense of insulin pump supplies. (At $100.00 per bottle, I’m not sure where they came up with the “poor man’s insulin pump” BS, but it does work.)

Tags: Lantis, poor man's insulin pump
Posted in Insulin Pumps | No Comments »

Getting A New Insulin Pump

Friday, January 16th, 2009

Just a quick note, when you are getting fitted for a new pump, make sure it’s the newest one out. When I got my first pump, they gave me one that was outdated the next day…. Assholes. The thing cost me thousands of dollars, and the the newer model was already out. The new one could do way more stuff, and really helped me control my blood sugars better, but I didn’t get it for years because of some greedy ass insulin pump rep who was dumping old units. (And the Dr. sure didn’t help cover my ass.)

So, do your research and find out what the new pump numbers are, and what they can do, before you sign the paperwork and take it home.

Tags: insulin pump, type 1 diabetic
Posted in Insulin Pumps | No Comments »

Medtronics 522

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

I have 2 insulin pumps, and don’t really like using either one of them, but if I had the new Minimed 522, I might be willing to give it a try again. This pump comes with a real time blood glucose checking system, that sends you BG to your pump every 10 seconds. If they had some glucagon built into the system, if would be a pretty good fake pancreas.

Does anyone have one? If so, how is it?

Tags: Insulin Pumps, medtronics, medtronics 522, minimed
Posted in Insulin Pumps | 2 Comments »