I anxiously waited by my front door on Tuesday morning hoping to see Big Brown making its way up the hill my parent's house is on. I sat by the door like an anxious puppy with my head turning at each passing car. After less than 24 hours I couldn't handle shots anymore. I had bruised my stomach twice, had a rapidly escalating blood sugar and overall just felt lousy from the worst control I had over my blood sugars since day 1. My knight in shining brown could not get here with my package fast enough.
Just before 10:30 am I was in my driveway to go pick up my Dad from the auto-mechanic shop where he had dropped a family car off for new brakes. As I opened my car door I heard a rumble at the end of the driveway - Big Brown had finally arrived! I signed for the package and called out for my Mom, I couldn't wait, it was time to put my tail back on!
Giddy with joy I opened each box, removed my remarkably similar new pump (there was some anticipation that there would be some distinguishing characteristic). I had hoped for a slightly different colored "ACT" button, maybe a slimmer profile, but NPP looks identical to OPP - I guess while OPP was not original in looks he was original in spirit. I take solace in the fact that on my belt NPP is OPP's twin.
I found my settings on my Minimed Connect site, loaded them into NPP, felt the oh so familiar sting of inserting an infusion site and was off to pumping again! By the time I had NPP up and running my blood sugar was up to 279. To manage my blood sugar while tail-less I set my alarm for 4am so that I could get some mid-sleep fast acting insulin into my system. At 4am my blood sugar was in the 250s, I took in 3 units of insulin and woke 3 hours later with a blood sugar of 215. At 8am I took in another 3 units of insulin but by 10:30 am without any breakfast I had hit the 279 mark. With my pump attached I bolused away but my blood sugar was still on the rise. Due to the lack of insulin in my system my bood sugar continued to climb into the 300s until I had enough insulin in my system to reach a homeostatic state. Around 5pm I finally had control over my blood sugars again.
Over the past few days I have noticed that the control I have over my blood sugar levels has been much tighter than what it was with OPP. During OPP's final few months I had to fight off low after low and often encountered an unusual high that made no sense. Foods that I would bolus for one day under the exact same environmental factors (exercise, temperature, etc) would require a totally different insulin amount the next day. I probably should have called Medtronic as soon as I noticed my blood sugars doing weird things because it was probably a warning side that OPP had gone crazy. NPP has worked like a champ and my bolus calculations have returned to what I expect them to be and my blood sugars are reacting like they should. I guess I'll take this as a lesson to never be too cautious when it comes to my blood sugars and when I notice something is repeatably out of line to take action and find out what's up.
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