(Just a reminder, I love it here, but I usually write for my radio listeners, who may not be quite as familiar with the terms, etc of diabetes. My main blog can be found at http://blog.wbt.com/stacey)
Big sigh of relief at my house this week when we heard the UPS truck. We get most of our insulin pump supplies through the mail; you can't get this stuff at CVS or Walgreens. It's a three month supply and usually we have several days, if not a week or two, of supplies left by the time the new stuff arrives.
However, this time around - for the first time - the supply got pretty low. On Friday, I noticed we only had two "buttons" left (that's what we call Benny's infusion set). I'd been told to expect my shipment Monday, so I was relieved to make it through the weekend. Those insets have a sneaky way of coming out at the worst times. Turns out, the order was shipped on Monday.. set to arrive Wednesday. I needed some backup.
The infusion set is how you connect the insulin pump's tubing to your body. It involves a needle that goes in and comes out, leaving behind a tiny hollow cannula. We use the Cleo 6mm which looks like a purple stamper:
Who would have samples they could hand over? I called our doctor, but they didn't have any. Our diabetes educator is fantastic, but I had to leave her a message. You can imagine how busy she is. I thought about calling some other D-families - but I couldn't think of one who uses the same type of inset we do. I called the JDRF office and we brainstormed about it. They sent me some phone numbers.
Finally, I decided to just head over to the Diabetes Center. Our educator was able to work me in after a little while. She didn't have samples of our infusion set but she did have another kind and gave me a quick lesson. It's called the Animas Inset and here's a video on how it works (you can see how it looks on the body around the 1:20 mark)
You'll notice the Animas inset is flatter and bigger than the Cleo. You can also see the needle in the Animas version, something both my kids noticed right away of course. There's also a long cover over the needle, so it looks even bigger than it is! For some reason, Benny didn't care about that - he just liked that the ones I brought home were blue, his favorite color.
Luckily, we had no problem with the infusion sets we had and never had to try the new ones. We're going to keep track of the supplies over the next couple of weeks and see if we can figure out why we got so low. Hopefully, just a glitch this time around, but at least now I've got my backups!