Back that pump up!

I've been pumping since November 2002. Medtronic and I have been together for almost 11 years now. It has just recently occurred to me that I haven't had a solid backup plan since around that time. Thankfully, I've never needed one.

I didn't have my pump setting written down for quite some time. Let me fill you in on the panic that led to this realization. It was a normal Friday night, and my pump was beeping at me to change my battery. I pulled out my pack of AAA batteries and changed the battery as normal. But nothing happened. My pump never came back to life. I frantically ran through my apartment looking for my backup kit. I pulled fresh batteries from a fresh pack and tried again. Nothing. Panic set in. I realized that I have no backup plan in place. If my pump had truly just died, I didn't know my settings, either! Thankfully, the thing came to life after sitting around for a few minutes as I was panicking.

Fast forward a few weeks. Another Friday night. Time to change my battery again. I changed it and waited the requisite two minutes for its display to come back. Everything was peachy. I went to bed with a low reservoir beeping. I thought I had enough insulin to last through the night. I was tired. My pump ran out of insulin at 4AM. Fine. I got up and filled a reservoir. As I was rewinding the pump, the pump shut off. No battery power. Ack. So I ran around and found another new battery and replaced it immediately. I had to rewind the pump again since it stopped halfway through. Then I finished changing my reservoir, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

I called Medtronic in the morning. The rep didn't sound very concerned. My pump had been acting up in a few different ways, and the accumulation was starting to really bother me. In addition to the power failure, it has taken longer and longer for the pump to wake up after a battery change. It's taken longer and longer to register blood sugar results being sent from my meter. When I was scrolling through to set the carbs for a bolus, it would routinely skip numbers. It would scroll... 20,21,22,45,46,47... It was the number skipping which concerned the rep. At any rate, I got a new pump on Monday. They told me they were out of purple pumps, and I was really bummed my replacement pump was going to be blue. When I opened the box on Monday, I was pleasantly surprised. 

I'm a mommy... and other discoveries.

Last week I found an abandoned infant kitten outside my apartment. It was only about a day old. After I realized the mom was not going to come back for it, I took the little thing in. I've never looked after a kitten this young before. I have to wake up every 2-3 hours to feed her. I've taken this opportunity to do a LOT of overnight blood tests. I've made a very pleasant discovery. My blood sugar does nothing overnight. Nothing. 10 PM: 107 1AM: 109 3AM: 107 6AM: 112 9AM: 110. This makes me so super happy. I used to plummet overnight, and then we adjusted my basal rate and continually woke up high. Now I can bolus before I go to bed (if my blood sugar is high) and I don't have to worry about going low overnight.

I think about this kitten almost as much as I think about my diabetes. Almost every time I feed the kitten I do a blood test. Having a kitten is almost as good as having a CGM.

My blog... isn't the bloggiest of blogs.

I've been through this before, where I start a blog and only make a few entries before I give up. I really don't want that to happen again. It's much easier to keep up with Twitter. It's only 140 characters at a time! I started my Twitter so I could have a venue to post about diabetes in a funny way, where people would actually get the jokes. The Pancreassassin was born.

As I mentioned in another post, I had my diabetes rebirth around January 2013. I started taking things more seriously, and I got involved online. I figured humor was the way to go. I'm not saying that diabetes is not serious. I am saying that if you don't have a positive way to look at diabetes, it will destroy you. In order to avoid that, I'm trying to be funny. Yeah, trying. I crack jokes to people who understand diabetes all the time in my offline life. I wear diabetes-themed shirts, and I've had a few good conversations about diabetes with people I'd never speak to before. Also, at 23 years old, I'm finally okay talking to strangers, so go me (I'm the most introverted introvert you'll ever meet).