It turns out our fridge has been intermittently freezing my insulin. (figured this out after finding water bottles next to it with ice in them.) I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my BG would randomly spike. Once I got a fresh vial from the pharmacy and never put it in the fridge...tada...nearly perfect control! I ended up having to throw out 4 bottles of Novolog, and my Humalog/Lantus backup pens.
I've tried everything to stabilize the fridge, rearranging so no items are blocking air flow, moving the thermometer around to see if there is a spot that doesn't eventually drop below 32, tweaking the temperature constantly, no luck.
Short of buying a new kitchen fridge, does anyone use something else to store their insulin in that won’t break my budget right before Christmas?
I’d like to store 1-3 vials as backup along with a couple of pens in case my pump dies.
I would use some Frio wallets in a cooler darker room of your house but with no danger of freezing. I once lost a dozen vials to freezing due to inadvertently brushing up against the thermostat wheel with an overcrowded refrigerator situation. Once it freezes, it's gone.
Or I would think about finding a small used yet dependable fridge, maybe at a garage sale. Like a college dorm room size. For the price of the Frio wallets you might be able to buy a used fridge.
I use the butter dish or the door shelves in my fridge with no problem even if the food at back gets crunchy cold. Have also used frio packs for travel with good success.
Have you checked the seal, if your fridge door isn't closing tightly and if the rubber gasket has gotten frayed or has become hard your fridge will run overtime and you can get freezing. You should check to see if your fridge is running continuously (or too often) by listening to it. Running continuously is an indication of a seal problem (or thermostat problem). You can coat the seal with a thin layer of vaseline to help it soften and seal. There are different things that can go wrong to cause a freezing problem which can be fixed. These problems include a thermostat problem, stuck air inlet or the worst, a fried control board.
Given your description your fridge is very close to 32 deg F since the bottles had ice, but were not frozen. If a water bottle sat in fridge for a week at freezing it would be frozen solid. Until you get this resolved you can have a temporary solution by putting your vials in a tightly sealed zip lock bag and placing them in a gallon of water in the fridge. Each day change part of the water with fresh cold tap water. The thermal mass of the gallon of water will keep the vials from freezing but you need to pay attention and change the water. You might find that the water doesn't ice at all for a week.
But still you need to fix the fridge even to just make it usable. If it is really at freezing that it will destroy lots of things like lettuce very quickly. You can get a new 18 cu ft fridge from Sears for under $500.
I agree with the idea of finding a compact fridge-only unit. Just search "compact refrigerator" on Amazon and you can find a new one for $80 or less. There's a little Coca-Cola one for $50 that is meant to hold a 6-pack, so that should be plenty of room. Frio wallets are great for travel, but they only keep insulin cool, not cold, so they aren't good for longer than 6-8 weeks.
I personally wouldn't use a small fridge with no freezer because my experience with them has been that they freeze everything. Maybe they're better designed now? I bought a smaller avanti model that has a separate freezer for my insulin but I don't keep it there since people occasionally forget to close the door properly and I wouldn't notice it soon enough. I have everything in plastic bags, labeled with dates on the boxes in the bottom of a larger fridge. So far so good. I probably would just buy a new one or something like my avanti since you don't want to waste all your emergency insulin supply and have your bg running high etc. Frio wallets are a good idea for power outages also if you have no other power sources, as long as you keep putting the gel in water they should be ok, but I don't think that is a great idea for long term normal storage.
I have a spare cooler (hard plastic, I think sized to hold 12 or 18 cans) that lives under the bed with a couple room temp (~65*F) gel packs** and all of my test strips, a box of sensors and a spare vial of humalog in it. I haven't had any issues with anything in the cooler, even despite repeat issues of the house losing heat (heater died repeatedly when we first moved in) and too much heat (over zealous wood stove useage to attempt to make up for broken heater, which is why everything is now in a cooler in the first place, I had a couple runs of bad sensors and some vials of humalog which mysteriously stopped working about half way though, later diagnosed as "overheated" on the top shelf in the living room near the wood stove; live and learn). I would think especially if you're not in danger of getting too hot (room temp 75+) that that would work more than adequately as a short term solution, and should even be fine as a long term back up plan when/if you get a new fridge.
Otherwise though, the FRIOs are awesome, and easy, and I have trusted my insulin to one while camping in below freezing temps and alternately in Honduras in a room without A/C and in both instances had no problems. Cheap and easy, but if you don't already have one on hand it might not be a quick enough solution....
**Room temp gel packs because I just want to help maintain a constant temperature, I don't need cold and I'm not going to the trouble to replace cold packs every day.
Important to understand though that a frio really doesn’t do much cooling unless they are in a very hot, very dry environment. In an environment with substantial humidity they will provide no cooling whatsoever.
My experience with my FRIO on a tropical island (temp and humidity both averaging 80-85 %/*F) was that it was at least cool to the touch at all points in time, so I figured it was better than leaving things at room temp.
While your comment is very technically true, wouldn't the humidity have to be as wet as the FRIO to completely prevent the evaporation? My very general understanding of such is that as long as the air is dryer than the 'Thing to be Dried' (anything from wet swimsuits to a wet dog) the Thing will evaporate until it reaches the same humidity as the air, which means as long as you aren't in 99% humidity and you keep the FRIO nice and wet that it will provide at least some protection.
It works in the cold too though, presumably by acting as more of a protective gel-pack-envelope than as an evaporative warmer (?), but it seems to serve a temperature-protecting function in cold (near freezing) weather also.
Yes it will provide some cooling in anything less than 100% humidity, but not a whole lot. It will feel cool to the touch but only be a little bit cooler than ambient temperature— you can prove this by sticking a thermometer inside your frio. I leaned this because I’ve sent in ocean weather reports all over the world using both dry bulb and “wet bulb” thermometers side by side— the later are sleeved with a thin fabric saturated in evaporating water–/ the difference in those temps is how relative humidity is calculated at sea level in the middle of the ocean which is entered into forecasting models…
I just reread this thread. I'd like to make something clear, assured long-term storage of insulin (specifically Lantus) requires controlled temperature at 36-46 deg F. Sure, Lantus may last at higher temperatures but it is fragile and you are taking a risk particularly if you want it to sit there for two years.
And you just won't get that with the Frio. The Frio will keep pens and vials at 77-79 deg F. That just doesn't do it for long-term storage. I'd urge you to really try to fix your fridge problem.
From one poster above: "There's a little Coca-Cola one for $50 that is meant to hold a 6-pack." I just bought this for $23 at Home Depot. Plan to use it at bedside for juice overnight. It plugs in outlet. It says that the cold temp will go to 32 degrees F below ambient temp. So, if my room temp is 68, in theory, it will cool to 36. Not that I need it that cool to keep a small bottle of juice overnight.
It also supposedly keeps warm things warm by switching to 'heat' vs 'cool.' This was a spur of the moment purchase but have been needing a small cooler like this for a long time. Plug-in type, that is.
I would be careful with the small dorm type fridges, They can easily freeze, especially if they are not opened often.
Small fridges do not have separate thermostats like a large kitchen refrigerator does. They have only a freezer T-stat, they depend on heat gain thru the cabinet wall and heat gained when the door is opened to keep the refrigerator section from reaching freezing temperatures.
A wine cooler as Emmy suggested might be a good idea provided that they are capable reaching the 36 to 46 range mentioned by Brian.
Thanks for all the replies! I've settled on getting a wine fridge, the trick is finding one that goes below ~45 degrees. I don't need it until February when I can rebuild some of my backup insulin supplies, so I'll be digging through Amazon and other places to find a good one.
Thanks for posting this, I was wondering about wine coolers too since most of them don't have a low enough temp for insulin. This one looks nice. I'm going to look into this myself if it works out for you I think this would probably be easier to keep running during an extended power outage.
I'll definitely post after using it for a couple weeks. It was indeed difficult to find a small wine cooler that went below 46 degrees. I'm still skeptical, but since its from Home Depot it will be easy to return if necessary.
