Poking holes in myself

Hello all you pumpers! I hope to become one of you soon, but I have a question. Right now I'm doing the MDI thing. There are times when I give a shot and I feel nothing at all and other times it feels like I may as well be driving a roofing nail through myself (okay, so maybe a slight exaggeration there ;-) ). I've kinda worked out a system where I "probe" an area and can tell by that whether or not it's going to be a problem. If it feels like it will I move on until I find a better place. Oddly enough, I can go back to sites that felt like they'd be a problem one day and the next they are just fine. Do any of you experience the same thing with your insertions? Are the gushers I've read about ones that tend to be painful? Have you found anyway to figure out if one insertion will be more of a problem than the last? Just trying to see what might be in store for me in the future!

I have experienced the same thing with MDI. there have been places where I couldn't touch myself with the needle, only to move over a quarter inch and have no problem.

As for inserting an infusion set; for me, the worst one was the first one that the pump trainer inserted. What happens is the spring that shoots in the infusion set canula is so fast that the body doesn't have time to react. I was told tha tif stinging is a problem, to get some alcohol swabs laced in lidocane to numb the site before insertion.

As for a gusher, those happen too. Gushers require a new infusion set in a different place. Bleeding back into the canula and infusion tube will cause plugging and thus, no or poor insulin infusion. It's a good think that they happen very seldom.

Good luck with the pump.

I do the same thing w/ the infusion sets and sensors that you do w/ the syringes and it's usually pretty reliable. I don't always throw out "gushers" either as, if I can stop the bleeding, they usually seem to work ok? The sensors aren't cheap and I don't throw them out for blood, just if they don't work very well.

Yes you're near gushers and tendons when it's painful.
Gushers are on the inside of the upper arm, the outer edge of the abdominal fat pads and skip the "near the umbilicus" area.
Check out anatomy on the web and see where blood vessels are close to where you have a habit of giving shots.
After you have prepared your shot with thinking apparatus in high gear, looking and identifying which insulin you're giving 3x, and how much you're giving and where you gave it last time, choose another spot and give shot FAST.
I believe in drawing for myself places that are good ones complete with inches from markers. Put it in your food/insulin record book.

When on MDI I also had occasional pain when inserting and I discovered that a longer needle rarely hurt. Weird huh? So I asked my Dr to write the script specifically for the longer needles so they wouldn't automatically fill with those short ones.

What food/ insulin record book LOL!

That seems almost counter-intuitive! When I probe I just barely put enough pressure on the skin to see if I feel the "sharpness" (for lack of a better term) or to see if it'll go right in so I dunno that needle length would make a difference at that point. However, I'll definitely keep that in mind if I stay with MDI too much longer and have more problem areas than not.