Tonight my husband noticed a fair amount of blood around the cannula of his pod, and decided to change it out. It was only a day old, but had been slightly more uncomfortable than normal. As he was filling a new one, I glanced at his old pod and noticed the insulin left in the reservoir was tinted red. I held it up to the light, and saw several clots of blood in there as well. Has this happened to anyone else, or does anyone know what caused it? This was the first time in 6 months podding that one's ever drawn blood. I would have thought the pressure of the insulin being forced out would have prevented anything from traveling up the cannula to the reservoir?
As I understand it, when the cannula goes in, it picks up skin, blood & human tissue. Normally the insulin flushes it out, sometimes it doesn’t & the debris causes an occlusion. In your case, it sounds like the irritation produced more blood & gunk at the insertion site, the pod never fully cleared & you removed it before it occluded.
my son has had a few bloody canulas and they do usually hurt more than others sometimes we try to ride it out, if it clears like belinda suggested with a bolus things can be fine, but a bloody canuala for jacob is usually a sign of a partial or complete occlusion to come rising blood sugars ....trouble... your husband did the right thing by changing it.. all part of podding ups and downs hope things are better! amy
I haven’t had that happen with the pod yet, but I imagine it will. Occasionally with MDIs I would have a “bleeder” that left a bruise the day after. And ouch! Those hurt.
I've had that happen once before. I toughed it out and was OK for the normal 2 days I get out of a pod. BG tests were average too.
Worst part was the uncomfortable feeling the pod had on my skin. It was a little different location than I normally use, so I don't go back there any more.
Thanks everyone! I had known it was possible to have bloody cannulas, but never realized it could travel up into the reservoir like that. His bg was fine for the day he had it on, but it definitely would have gone bad once the clots tried to go down the cannula. He said this morning he thinks he forgot to bolus right after putting the last one on, and instead waited until he ate a few hours later. Maybe that gave it time to seep up into the reservoir.