This morning as I was about the get out of my vehicle at work I notice that unmistakable smell, insulin. A quick check of my site confirmed that my site was leaking. I had just installed this site an hour earlier.
I found the site was leaking at the connection point. I am never more than an hour from my home, this time less than 20 minutes. So its to the house I go for a set change. After a quick set change and a bolus because my bs was 287 its back to my vehicle to return to work, that’s when I smell it again, insulin. another site check revealed that the new set, just inserted, was also leaking in the exact same way.
I did another change, this time from a different box of infusion sets. I will be contacting Medtronic about these faulty sets.
Icing on the cake, my second site was a bleeder when I removed it.
As Gary knows full well, the smell associated with natural gas is artificial; it’s added deliberately to make leaks obvious. In the case of insulin, I believe it’s just a lucky side effect. That just happens to be the way the preservative smells.
Which is all well and good if you can smell … Do not ask me to cook a recipe that says “Saute until the garlic is fragrant.” (Clincher question to prospective spouse: Can you smell insulin?)
My problem seems to be different than that of the other member, I use Silhouettes, a different set. In the other case it was permanent tubing attachments coming apart. In my case it was leaking from the disconnect point between the set and tubing.
I have been pumping for 4 1/2 years. I have experienced a few sites that stopped absorbing especially if used for to long but this was mechanical failure.
I have always held a few sets in reserve in case something like this happens. I always thought I was being overly cautious but now I see that it was a good move.
That’s funny, As David alluded to I have worked in the natural gas industry for close to forty years. When I was a customer service technician I would often hear this statement from women while investigating gas odor complaints.
“I smell gas but my husband does not smell it because he doesn’t smell good.”
It always made me laugh, she is referring to his poor sense of smell but it didn’t come across that way. One thing I learned over the years is that if a woman smells gas I was likely to find something leaking even if I could not smell it myself. The majority of women have a much much better sense of smell than a man.
FWIW, I think Unomedical’s quality is slipping. I’ve posted elsewhere of my problems with Tandem branded sets with no stickiness whatsoever. I don’t trust the pump companies to kick anyone at Unomedical, so I am filing individual adverse events with the FDA for every (now approaching 30) defective Unomedical infusion set.
Get enough people piling on, and perhaps…just perhaps Unomedical will act ethically and improve their quality instead of acting like the near monopoly they are.