The cannula is on the outside of the needle
Lizzie if its on the outside then how does it go into the skin? That is where I am a wee bit confused
When I first started on my pump I had just refilled my rx for my pens. The CDE showed me how to take the insulin out of the pens and put it in the pump. It is a little more difficult than using vials but it is do able. As soon as my vials came in the mail I switched over to the vials and kept my pens for emergency. Now, I always keep a few syringes in my emergency kit just in case.
They will be giving me a script for syringes and vials. But I just refilled my boxes of pen needles. If i have left overs which I will, I will have them for a back up. But what if I want to take a pump vacation. Is having my lantus around good or on a pump vacation you just use the fast acting?
If you go on an actual pump vacation Amy you will need your long acting as well as your rapid insulin. If you are just having a temporary problem with your pump or set you just use your pen of fast acting to get your blood sugar down.
Just curious, what do you need syringes for with the pump?
that is what they want to do i guess.
What do you mean, Amy, your doctor wants you to use syringes instead of a pen if you have problems? Actually it’s probably more economical, because you have the vials anyway and the syringes don’t expire. I actually never thought of that, because I never used syringes.
Maybe I will ask my doctor to prescribe syringes after I go through the supply of pens I have (or they expire)
I still have one syringe left from when I was first diagnosed. I never needed it for anything until I had a pen issue and used the syringes I had left. Now I’m down to 1. Good thing those dont expire!
The canulas are on the inside of the needle. If you look at the infusion sets especially the Animas ones you can see the needle but not the canala. I do believe it does expand once you have it inside of you and you start putting insulin through it. It is the same basic concept as an IV needle.
I actually extracted insulin from my pen to put in my cartridge last night. I have been going through the 3 vials I ordered much quicker than I expected because of the learning curve and normal waste with a pump and I had more pens left than I will need. It was easy!
ahhh thanks 
By the time I am up and running I am sure I’ll be more careful about the amt I use. I picked up my very last box of pens today :)…I have a total of 10 (5 lantus and 5 humalog). I am getting more excited as the days progress
You can try to be careful, Amy, but there is a certain amount you will naturally lose with a pump, such as the amount used for priming. It is also hard to compute exactly how much you will use before you have to change your set; and sometimes you have to change your set early due to problems. One time when I had a lot in my cartridge when that happened I just switched over the cartridge so I could re-use it instead of getting a new one. People on here have mentioned adding to what is left in a cartridge, but so far I have screwed up when I tried to do that…lol. I think you might need a syringe to do that.Some things I think you can learn to economize more, as time goes on, but there is definitely loss. If I’d known how much I would use up I would have asked my doctor for more for the first three months. But since I have it in the pens (and that is easy to do even for me!) I just fill some cartridges from there.
thanks Zoe…I brought my stuff with me this weekend to my boyfriends house so I have it. Planning on getting a external DVD rom drive so I can review the orientation DVD. I am going to re-read the big book and go through the workbook. I want to finish reading it and stuff.
Personally I wouldn’t read the big book more than once because most of it is step by step instructions to program various settings that is a lot more about doing than theory. I read it all once ahead of time, but then when I got my pump I went through page by page to program each setting and I also wrote the settings I chose in the book so I have it hard copy. I’ve already whited out a lot of those settings and changed them already! Some because I wasn’t correctly understanding the purpose and how it would act (like blood glucose targets) and some just because with experience I’m fine tuning. Like I started out with just one basal rate suggested by animas which was 20% below my MDI Total Daily use. Then i lowered that number by another 10% because I was getting lows. Then I started to see patterns of small lows at the same times and small highs at the same times and now I have 5 different rates!
I return to bits and pieces in the big book all the time now to clarify things. I haven’t returned to the workbook at all, but I do re-read parts of Walsh.
Ah,Then I must find the book. I can’t seem to remember where I put it. Now I wished he had an e-book version. So much easier
I guess I’m still stuck in the 20th Century; I’ve never read an e-book. I just like the way a book feels. I also like underlining and marking if it’s that kind of book though I understand there are some textbook websites where you can do that. Maybe one day I’ll get on board. But yes, I found Pumping kind of the same idea as the workbook, but better because he explains things
oh I still buy books :)…There are books that I like so much that I want to bring with me for travel, etc.
I LOVE books. I finally stopped carting around boxes and boxes of books I never had room for when I moved out of the country. It felt very freeing, but every once in awhile I still find myself looking for such and such a book. Ok, now you will totally think I’m nuts. I have a list of every book I’ve read since 1969! (With ratings) It’s just something I started doing one day and it became a habit. The list fills up several notebooks. My niece is doing it now too.
I so far have 2 books on my e-reader. I am hoping to add diabetic books as well. The Diabetic books will be helpful for me at least. I have a few in my wish list to add down the line.