Insulin Pens

Type 1 and LADA Parents of Children with Type 1 Diabetes
1

Hi all,

I just switched my MDI routine to insulin pens from vial and syringe. I’m having a little trouble with the transition, and have made myself bleed twice. Any tips for successful use, especially where to use it, best way to use in public, etc. would be appreciated.

2

Hi Hairza
I inject on the “love handle” part of my waste right around the pant line. I squeeze about a 1 inch piece of skin into a little mound and inject while still squeezing. I find the location easy to access even out at a restaurant. Once you get used to it, it’s so quick and easy (I’ve even injected waiting at a red light - but try not to make a habit of that for obvious reasons).

Hope it goes well for you.
Take care
Randi

3

I inject in my tummy as well, moving around to all different points. I squeeze up a piece of skin and inject and then hold it in for the count of 10 seconds because otherwise it tends to “dribble” a bit out. It’s super easy to do unobtrusively when you are wearing pants or a skirt, but not with a dress obviously! I only bleed very occasionally if I hit a blood vessel or something and it usually doesn’t hurt at all. I don’t know why your use of sites would differ from what you did with a syringe.

4

There are instructions with the Levimir pens that say to “keep the needle in your skin, and keep the push-button pressed all the way in until the needle has been pulled out from the skin.” I keep the needle in for at least 5 seconds, or one second for each unit I have injected, whichever is greater. That seems to have solved the problem for me.

5

when I used pens I used to inject through my clothes all the time. I used the outer thighs, inner thighs and the stomach area. Worked fine. Didnt’ inject through white shirts. Every once in a while I’d get a gusher.

6

Cool, Hairza! Hope to see you at the next meeting on 11/13. Send me your e-mail through here so I’m sure you’re on my mailing list!

7

Make sure the needles aren’t too long. That happened to me at first. Now I have the short needles.

8

Least the tips i remember… Been awhile since iv used a pen…

I think i only had one or two gushers…

  1. Make sure your using a short or smaller pen needle…(unless you got a big amount of pinch)
  2. Pinch up, even just a little, and inject…
  3. Count to 10… (This was repeatedly told to me, not 5, but 10)…then withdraw the pen tip
  4. Make sure you rotate sites, Injecting in a bruse area does tend to cause a bleed…
  5. Try not to reuse pen tips… This can tend to cause bleeds… esp since they are usually finer than their corresponding syringe counterparts (as usual YDDV but i know this caused a couple of my bleeds)