My problems with infusion sets may not be over quite yet ... The past week my blood sugar control has really gone downhill:
It was starting to remind me a lot of how the ‘old days’ (if I can call them that!) looked. Granted, the high this morning was my fault for letting my pump run out of insulin, but that came down fairly quickly only to spike up again. The past few days have literally just been a rollercoaster of highs and lows even with the same food and activity, just like before.
The last two sites I changed before my current one were irritated. One was on my leg that I ended up moving and that worked well, my blood sugars went back to being great. One was on my hip which I couldn’t see but got super itchy near the end. The one I removed tonight was on my arm and was very irritated. In fact, if I didn’t know better I would think I was still using the old infusion sets! Red, itchy, “hive” around the needle, tiny hives underneath the adhesive. Both adhesive patches were irritated, but the one that had the needle was worst.
I just have to say: ARGH!
I’ve been using Skin Tac which is supposed to be hypoallergenic, but which seems to cause irritation. However, tonight is the first time a site has looked essentially identical to the way my sites looked when using sets with cannulas. I will go crazy if these needle sets don’t work out! I’m going to try and get some of that adhesive remover stuff mentioned in the forums (can’t recall the name now) to see if that helps. But I’m pretty sure the irritation is starting before I actually remove the sites, because they’re getting itchy. I would try and not use the Skin Tac, but then I have the sets falling out after literally an hour or two of having them in and have to tape them down, and the tape itself gets itchy and irritated …
I still feel like I’ve figured out my problem, because when my sites aren’t irritated my blood sugar is amazing (when I’m not going low). But apparently I still have some work to do!