Sorry, I confused your comments with @Kathlyn who lives in Florida and reports a similar experience to yours.
If it was true that “insulin potency is reduced by plastic,” then wouldn’t that hold true in every case?
I definitely observe this with infusion site age, but not with insulin cartridge age. Since you change out both every three days, is it possible you may be attributing rising glucose to cartridge age when it might be site age that is the cause?
I don’t think it possible to always know ahead of time, how long between changes. I think it also depends on what kind of infusion set, ie steel vs canula. I usually change every two days. Sometimes I miss and forget for a day, but other times there is an irritation and change it in one day, or even in a few hours. So, basically it depends on how your sister’s body reacts to the sets. I have heard of people changing every three and a half days, say Monday morn and Thurs afternoon. But again it depends, should be looked at by caregiver to see if needs a change.
@CBarber — We do like to get into the granular details about this stuff, since we’re involved in it every day of our lives. And it gets more granular the deeper you go. But you’re actually facing a different situation in which the various refinements of what we do in caring for ourselves may not be all that relevant or helpful in trying to tell someone else what to do. If I were trying to instruct a caregiver in how to take care of, not myself, but my sister or mom or whoever, unless that caregiver came with a certification of considerable expertise in this stuff I would keep it as simple as possible and just have them switch it every three days, barring failures or accidents. There’s really no downside, except possibly wasting a bit of insulin, and there are enough complications with managing this disease as it is, even for us “experts” let alone someone with less specialized caregiving skills, without adding a lot of if-then refinements to when a site change needs to be done.
I think the question I want to ask is why someone (your sister or caregiver?) wants to do it twice a week. I would say that if it helps to have a site changed regularly consistently then this might be an advantage. Monday, change site. Thursday change site. I have to mark down on my calendar when to change site, otherwise I forget. I fill the cartridge so that it lasts 6 days.
Sometimes guidelines are stretched if money is an issue. For example, when I put in a new cartridge I use the full infusion set. When I change sites halfway through, I keep the tubing and only use a new cannula. When money was tighter, I would fill the cartridge to last 8 days.
Hope this helps.
It would be done twice a week for scheduling purposes and cost. It is hard for the agency doing this to have a person every 3 days as then the days are always changing. Much easier to get someone to come in every Monday and Thursday.
My sister is very low income and has to pay $20 every time they do a site change. Medicare does not cover this as she is not considered home bound. All supplies, however, are paid for so that is not an issue.
I think that scheduled site changes would be beneficial for your sister. Routine is important for diabetes management for seeing patterns and just to have one less “unknown” to worry about. Best of luck to you.
It will help the agency, help you and your sister, if you have her physician write the order that way. Otherwise, I’m betting there would/could be problems because the agency must follow the orders. I’d also ask the doctor to add to the orders that site changes can be made earlier, if/as necessary (such as site failures - and, they happen).