So just today I went through 5 insets. Each one was extremely painful and filled with blood. I tried my arm, stomach and my usual butt/hip spot. Its just been too painful to deal with, so I took a half dose of levemir and I'm gonna try again in the morning.
Has anything like this or similar happened to you? It's very frustrating that I just went through half a months worth of sets.
I've had that happen, but I usually was using my usual (stomach) area and when I switched to a whole new body part for a while, it helped the problem. But you used several different areas so that is really strange. This may or may not apply to you but I have terrible eye hand coordination and I was having problems a lot going through sets so I re-read the directions again line by line and discovered I'd developed a bad habit with my insertion technique. Worth a try. Finally I ended up switching to Comfort Detach, the metal sets which insert manually and all my set problems/wasted sets were ended. Something to consider. Sorry you've had that awful experience today; very frustrating!
I recently switch to the Medtronic silhouette inserts. They insert at an angle. I was amazed at how much the pain was reduced. I had been using the same insert for years and lived with pain. Not sure if animas has something similar, but you might take a look.
I use Comfort Shorts with my Animas pump and they are the equivalent of the shorter Silhouettes sets through Medtronic. I've always had a ton of failures and painful sites with 90 degree sets such as Quick Sets, Mios, and Insets. Although I don't love the manual insertion with Silhouettes/Comfort Shorts, the pay-off is very few painful or failed sites. I usually insert them at a shallow angle and sometimes don't even push them all of the way in. I've never used the Comfort Detach sets and might order 1 box with my next order. Lots of people seem to like them.
I'm thinking of getting the inset 30 next time. They're angled and I dont have to do manual insertion. Hopefully they'll work better
I dreaded the manual insertion for a long time, Taylor. When I actually tried it, it was no big deal.Well worth it for me to eliminate set problems. I didn't find too much difference between angled and straight plastic sets.
I'm hoping next time I go to my endo, I can get a sample of the comfort shorts and the inset 30s. Maybe they'll work better. I've tried putting sites on my stomach multiple times but its always been too painful. I have plenty of fat on my tummy for it, so I don't know why it always stings or bleeds. With injections it was always fine.
But I currently did my 6th site in 24 hours and it felt fine :)
next time you change out, use a different box. Twice in 25 years of pumping I've gotten a bad box. Once was when I was on a weekend trip.
When I switched to Animas, I did try a box of the Inset30's since angled sets work the best for me. They're OK, but just overly complex. Because I had been manually inserting Silhouettes for almost 8 years with Medtronic, it was no big deal for me to keep manually inserting. There is an argument (same reason I never used the Medtronic Silserter) that the trauma to your body from the automatic inserters can lead to worse sites. I just screwed up Inset 30 insertions too many times to feel confident that I could only keep one extra set in my purse. There is just not much that can go wrong with manual insertion of Comfort Shorts (once you have done it for a while) and that confidence is worth the few seconds of pain for insertion.
I am relatively thin and more susceptible to painful sites that people who have more body fat. So many of the 90 degree sites feel like they hit muscle or whatever.
This has happened to my daughter once. No fun! We called Animas and they mailed us a new box for free and requested the balance of the ‘bad batch’ to inspect.
Ahh, if I would of know I could of done this I would of organized my supplies better. I currently put most of my supplies in the bottom drawer of my dresser, and I had 2 boxes of sets open, so I don't know which came from which box.
I'm thinking it's some sort of cosmic vibrational disharmony over the weekend or something :-), because after months of no pod problems, I went through 3 over the weekend with pod errors. Each time, a bloody site when I removed the pod.
Zoe, does "manually" mean you simply remove the sterile covering on the needle (cap, tape, whatever?) and poke the needle directly into your skin by hand?
Just trying to understand the lingo...
Yes, exactly, Dave. Piece of cake.
It’s happened to me yes. I had an issue with the casuals themselves and so altered which type I used however this cannula issue had been going on with me for weeks. If I were you, I would attempt to site my cannula in a place where I had never done it before (I normally do my cannula below my belly button therefore I would try doing it above). Just do it in a place you never have. If not. Then I hope someone else can give some better advice. Also, I, sorry about your canulas. I live I’m England where we get all our diabetes supplies for free so I count myself lucky. I hope you have enough.