Monday, August 6, 2012

The Kinks

I've been making great progress getting my blood sugars back under solid management.  Since my A1c wake up call I've gotten myself back to having blood sugars consistently in the 90 - 140 range and can totally feel the difference.  The constant headaches, stomach cramps and other issues related to bouncing blood sugars have left.  I'm able to focus more consistently, enjoy all my workouts and eat like myself again.  All this has left me feeling great and hopefully made me a lot more pleasant to be around.

But... from time to time I'm still getting some really annoying/ weird blood sugar situations.  I'm not sure if the infusion sets that Animas uses are less sturdy than the sets Medtronic uses but I have vastly more issues now than I did with OPP.  I've noticed a few things with the Animas infusion sets:
  • Kinks at the end of the animas set are alot more likely
  • The cannula has a much greater tendency to dislodge itself
  • Leaving the infusion set in for more than 3 days leads to a bit of a calcium/ scar tissue build up
I felt like the Medtronic sets were alot more consistent and that if I had solid skin contact on initial insertion I could be confident the cannula would be in there when my reservoir ran out.  With the Animas sets that simply isn't the case.  I'm running into case after case of the kinks; where the end of the cannula gets pinched or crimped leading to improper insulin flow.

For the past few weeks the only times I've gone above 225 have been from a case of the kinks.  I have no real desire to ever get off an insulin pump but at least with shots you know the insulin was delivered.  With a pump getting a case of the kinks is just something you have to deal with; but with tighter regulation I can be pretty sure that if my blood sugar is above 250 something is going on.