Ooozing Insulin

So this may be my grossest blog post of all time...

Upon my return trip from Thailand (full bolus food report forthcoming) my blood sugars were unsurprisingly wacky.  A 12 hour time change and 30 hours of travel to make it home can send a person's metabolism totally out of whack, even if they have no issues to speak of.  So for a type 1 diabetic extensive travel often comes with some blood sugar management issues.

However, when I got back from Thailand my blood sugars were all over the map.  My bs didn't want to be consistent, cropping up at weird times and staying stagnant for a short period of time after a meal until a big spike occurred.  I assumed it was just my body getting used to a different eating schedule and planned to suffer through for a couple days.

On one of my last boluses before changing my infusion set I began to think something other than the time change was affecting me. The long trip had my stomach in knots and a wacky sleep pattern had me not very hungry.  So for my first 2 days back in the States I was living on toast and chicken soup.  For dinner on Wednesday night I had 2 pieces of whole wheat toast and a can of Campbell's Chicken & Stars soup - we're talking a total of no more than 80 grams of carbohdyrates.  Even though I took in 7.5 untis of insulin for that meal my blood sugar spiked to 308 about an hour and 1/2 after my meal.  I had around 7 units of insulin left in my pump so it was time for a change anyway.

When I removed my infusion set and was rewinding my pump I suddenly felt a ton of wetness on the side of my stomach.  When I looked down there was something that looked like water around the injection area.  I then ran my hand over it and it smelt like insulin - hmm odd I thought.  I ran my finger over my infusion old infusion site and some more insulin seemed to pop out.  So then like any curious person would do I squeezed the old infusion site and the hole gushed insulin - I'd say at least 10 units!

Disgusting! As I changed my infusion site insulin was freaking leaking out of my body, doesn't it know it's supposed to stay in there!  I checked out the old cannula and it was crimped at the end - something that seems to be happening way more often with my Animas sets than my old Medtronic sets.  At least I finally have an answer for where all the unused insulin goes when your site is crimped, it comes out the other end...