Back to square one

I am really not having a good pump week at all …



Monday my pump ran out of insulin while I slept. I went from 6.1 (113 mg/dl) at bedtime to 21.3 (383 mg/dl) five hours later when I woke up, by which point my pump had been out of insulin for four hours. Luckily I had a bit of a bolus on board when I went to bed, otherwise I think I would have been higher.



Yesterday I was slightly high after lunch but didn’t think much of it. I bolused a correction and about an hour later had a snack without re-testing. Before dinner I was 16.9 (304 mg/dl) and thought that was really weird. I bolused a correction and ate a very low-carb dinner (only about 15g of carbs) and two hours later I was still 16.7 (301 mg/dl), so I changed sites. When I pulled the infusion set the site was very red and irritated and the set had some blood on the adhesive, so I think that one definitely failed.



Then today I refilled a cartridge and changed my infusion set again even though it had only been a day. I was 12.8 (230 mg/dl) when I changed the site so I bolused a correction. I tested just now because I felt really high. It’s been about an hour and a half since I changes sites and I am 18.6 (335 mg/dl). You have got to be freaking kidding me … I will bolus for dinner (because my blood sugar often goes up quite a bit after a site change, like it takes the new site a few hours to kick in), but if I’m still really high in two hours I am pulling this site, too.



My blood sugars in general have been terrible and running high. I was in such a good routine of doing exercise every day and eating really well. But this past week hormones have kicked in which makes my blood sugar higher, my allergies have exploded which makes my body behave like it’s sick, and my work schedule has picked up pace (I’m working two very part-time jobs and one casual job) and it has just caused everything to go out of whack. I am not always home at lunch now which makes that a challenge. I already have to lug so much stuff around all day that I hate packing a lunch, but I’m going to try and get in the habit of doing that if I can and find some way of carrying everything that doesn’t involve a suitcase! And get in the habit of exercising again as well.



Ugh. I feel like I was making some progress and now this week I am right back to square one!

Would you have better results going back to MDI? How incredibly frustrating to deal with your pump running out of insulin & then site failures. I don’t have a pump & hearing of the problems people have to deal with, I’m glad I don’t. Hormones & allergies sure don’t help:( Insult to injury.

Life is fraught with setbacks. Never think of an obstacle as taking you back to square one. You have made real progress. Tomorrow is another day and I know things will get better.

@Gerri: I have/had much worse results on MDI. It’s too bad because sometimes I would like to take a pump vacation, but I tried it last summer and my blood sugars were a complete rollercoaster of highs and lows and almost never in rnage (I mean, it made the control I have with the pump look fantastic!). When I went on the pump it was solely for better control rather than convenience (the pump trainer said I was the first person she’d met who gave “better control” as the one and only reason for switching). For me the benefits of the pump far outweigh the drawbacks, even if it does annoy me sometimes!

@BSC: I think you are right that it will be easier to get back on track from here than if I were truly back at square one. Thanks for your comment!