Getting Used to the Pump

Two things occurred in the past 24 hours that have completely convinced me to go on the pump. Last night I was battling some lows - my Dad's 66th birthday was last week and last night I was able to have a slice of cake with him. To account for the pizza my family had for dinner I took 6 units of novolog and added 4 units for the cake. I started to get a headache about an hour later but my bs was a manageable 157. A few hours later I had dropped all the way down to 55 and needed a full glass of orange juice and 3 glucose tabs to return to normal levels. I realized that if my pump was filled with saline and not insulin I simply could have reduced my basal rate for a 1/2 hour to account for my mistake with the bolus injection - way easier than eating a ton of food to counter the combination of lantus and novolog.

The other thing that sold me on the pump was my time at the driving range today. As I previously stated one of my biggest fears was being comfortable with the pump during athletic activity. After 4 orthopedic surgeries I decided to hang up the cleats and turn to lower contact sports for my athletic endeavors. One of my passions is golf and it is really important to me that diabetes interferes as little as possible with the game. Today was my first time swinging a club while trying out the pump and I was thrilled with the results. In 90 degree weather, sweating like Patrick Ewing in the 4th quarter the canula stayed in the entire time. I'll attribute the problems with the infusion site I had during my run to my ignorance/ inexperience in setting up the site. In the future I plan to use IV Prep, I need to do some more research on which infusion set to use, some people have recommended the Unomedical Comfort Set. So I think I'll give that a try when I get my real pump, I plan to tell Danielle first thing Tuesday morning to file the paperwork so I can get the Animas 2020.