Funny Pump Stories :) ?!?!
Hello Kate,
My pump experience was pretty short lived. However one of the funnier stories about my experience… it was doing it usual bleeping which is like every other time it did it was ~annoying~ to put it mildly. Consider that I was sleeping at the time, or attempting and it was severely irritating and damned unpleasant to say the least.
Ok, Jeff sleeping… the bells of Notre Dame going off (aka the pump) in the muiidle of the night. I must have been sleeping fairly deeply for once with this thing.. and the bleep, bleep, bleep was going off. In walks the kitty.
Normally a playful, mischevious creature… she hears the strange ~squeeky noise~ from under the covers… so comes to investigate. Finding the source, she hears ~further noise~ and movement under the covers, as I turned over. The beeping continues…
She sees movement under the covers now, and attacks the tubing from the pump which happens to be the LONG tubing c. 3′ +/- and proceeds to pounce on it and bite it like string once after she crawls-slinks under the covers.
Kitty, clear lengthy tubing… 3am… bleep, bleep, bleep…
She loves playing with the tubing soooo much that she attacks it seriously, and viciously.
The alarm continues going off as the tubing is severed because she ate through it by now. Once eaten, she sees more movement closer to my hip and proceeds to attack and remove the INFUSION set (think IV needle) which is taped to my body to prevent it coming out.
RIP… she pulls it out and rips off the taping holding it in place because shes pulling so hard…..
Needless to say at that point I was AWAKE, the tubing, removed and the cat I turned into a soccer ball in my semi conscious state… Jeff bleeding and raw…
Nice kitty…. <GLARE
Anyone else have a good one <g
Jeff
November 3rd, 2004 at 9:50 pm
Jeff,
My pump experience was pretty short lived, too. I don’t know if my story is funny, exactly, but what the heck. I think the pump is great, if you can wrap your mind around the fact that you have something akin to an IV sticking in you all the time. When it works, it works great. My experience started with my (then) doc making me believe that he had *lots* of pump patients & they were doing great. I later found out that I was the first. They had me wear it (attached & infusing) with saline to get used to it being there. (Definitely a good idea, in my opinion.) After that, the had me go “live” with Humalog. It worked great for the first 20 hours! I could even deal with the mental part! Then, apparently, my body stopped absorbing the insulin. My sugar shot up over 250, I got a lump under the infusion site, and it got really red & hurt like the dickens! I called the diabetes educator nurse & she said maybe the infusion site was bad. She had me take a shot to bring
my bs down & then put in a new infusion site. Guess what. Same thing happened. It felt a lot like an allergic reaction. Funny thing is, when I took a regular shot of the Humalog, I was fine. So, I called the nurse the next day. She informed me that I was over-reacting (it hurt so bad I had trouble standing up from a sitting position)! So I said enough. I haven’t used the pump since. It’s really too bad, too. I was incredibly psyched about it. When my new doc asked me if I had considered the pump, I related the story to him. He said that it did, indeed, sound like an allergic reaction, and that it may be an issue with the prolonged exposure in one area. In fact, he said it may be that I can’t use the pump for that very reason. He still wants me to try, using a different type of insulin, but I’m just not sure. Maybe someday. But for now, I will stick with my 4 injections a day (between the Lantus & the Novolog). I am currently doing better that I have in a
long time. (Like since I got to be too old for my Mom to control my shots & what I ate!) My personal opinion is, if you can handle the thought of it, absolutely try it. There have been so many success stories that it would be almost crazy not to. On the other hand, if you’re like me & can’t get your mind around it, then let the pumpers enjoy & do what *you* need to. I don’t think there is one *right* way to approach insulin delivery. Find a method that works for you, & live as well as you can. I never thought I would say this, but I’ll take the needles, thank you.
IMHO
Stacy