Our son uses less than half (sometimes less than a quarter) of his insulin each month – and yet each month it expires and we toss this liquid gold in the trash.
I hate the waste, but since it’s already been opened, I’m not sure it’s sterile enough for someone with higher insulin needs and crummier insurance to just come over with a syringe and a bottle and take the anticipated remainder.
Does anyone have ideas on how I could donate this excess. Is it even safe to do so?
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Can you guys order pen cartridges in the US? They are common here in Canada (most people use refillable pens rather than disposable ones). The pen cartridges have 300 units each, and five come in each box. So it would be possible to take one 300 unit cartridge out, use it just as you would a vial, but keep the others in the fridge so that they don’t expire. They also don’t require that you inject air into them before drawing up insulin, so I find them easier to use, and they probably remain more sterile (not to mention they’re much smaller to carry around).
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The only idea I have is that maybe a local vet wouldn’t mind using opened insulin. Is the date expired or it has just expired from the opening date? What kind of insulin is it?? This is a very kind question, I hope you find an answer how to donate it.
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unopened boxes are welcome at most homeless shelters and of course at insulin for life (usually). I suggest talking to the school nurse. Sometimes they will know of a family who can use a helping hand. My advice is to not toss the unused insulin. Hold it until you finish the month with an unopened bottle and call the shelter or school nurse. I have also at some points found that the local Aids shelter will use it or direct me to a client. Also women’s shelters often have local needs.
Remember such insulin is still a prescribed product. It is important to make sure you are giving it to people you feel are responsible. It is illegal to give away prescription medications one to another. So be careful with it.
Also remember no products may be bought, sold or given away on TUDiabetes.
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I just commented on this in another post. At the very least, please make sure you always have a spare supply in case of emergency. I have used very old insulin, and it works. I got stuck without insulin once when I was snowed in. Imagine the horror of the symptoms when someone is first diagnosed, but not being able to do anything about it. It’s a nightmare. So save a bit, stash it away. If you never use it, no big deal, but please don’t get caught with nothing! I have tested it way past the expiration date, and it works fine.
Since you are using less than half, maybe just always keep the last half or two, and discard the older half. Rotate your saved stock.
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The OP’s kid is a pump user so it will be one of the rapid analog insulins. Dogs and cats would be prescribed long acting insulin, typically NPH.
I would second @Jen’s idea of using 3 ml pen cartridges.
I keep all my insulin refrigerated all the time, opened or not, except when it’s in a Frio going somewhere with me. I pretty much ignore the dates and just keep using it until it’s used up. I have yet to have a single vial go bad on me. Just saying.
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I use pens and refrigerate it. I know it’s okay out but I use the whole pen to the last drop. I too don’t look at expirations. Just me though and never had a problem.
^This.
Since you are pumping, there’s not much of an issue of the cold liquid being painful in injection.
If it were me, I’d just use it up. Sounds like a vial will go 60 days instead of 30. Refrigerated, that shouldn’t be an issue at all.
Use it until it is obviously less effective for your son. The thirty days is the guaranteed time it will work at full effectiveness, not a fixed time on open insulin. It lasts longer for most of us - days or weeks longer.
Once it starts to deteriorate, toss it.
You know, I might do this for myself, but I just feel like it’s challenging enough to get our toddler’s blood sugar into range and to eliminate or reduce all the potential variables that I am not willing to use expired insulin. The few times we accidentally forget by a few days, the insulin seemed to be noticeably less effective. Then again, that was during the summer and we had taken it to the beach a few times.
Still, we’re lucky enough to have good insurance so I feel like it’s not worth it to use expired insulin.
I will look into the pen cartridge option. I don’t know how much it costs my insurance or me, so that will be the deciding factor I guess.
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Hey, if insurance is covering the lion’s share of what the doctor prescribed, so the cost savings isn’t huge in your budget, toss the stuff when you replace it each month.
Just to have all the data, however – that anecdotal data that is not trusted by some – many have reported over the years here insulin potency surviving in warm climates unrefrigerated for months, and expired insulin that had been properly refrigerated being fine for months after expiration, pretty consistently. Some people have reported more than a year.
Storage and expiration allowances on medications, especially something like insulin, are based to a large degree on lowest-common-denominator behavior of the slobbering masses. So manufacturers have to account for what happens when you leave an insulin pen in the cupholder in your car in the middle of summer while its parked all day at work.
We can all treat insulin better, and get better results 
Once my daughter gets to the last few drops of insulin in a vial, I draw it up into a syringe, shoot it into the air in my bathroom, and pretend it’s a band-aid factory.
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I’m pretty sure that would cause the insulin to go bad almost immediately. That’s happened to me with both Humalog and Lantus (at separate times). I was on MDI at the time and could not figure out why my BG was 300-400 and would not come down. Didn’t realize it was because I was only getting basal and no bolus, or only getting bolus and no basal. But once I changed to a new vial of insulin, everything was fine again.
I tend to agree with @Tia_G , though, that unless you have very consistent control (which many on this forum do have) using expired insulin is just throwing in another variable that would make things even more difficult to figure out control-wise.
Yeah, me too. I was exaggerating a bit for effect 
Still, the point stands. 30 day expiration has a mojor component of carelessness in it.
However, I agree completely that this is not a necessary variable to add to the equation.
I agree, but I really want to encourage people to make sure they have a safety stash!
Absolutely!
As I mentioned in the Dexcom/FDA announcement discussion, I hoard supplies. It’s hard not to when your health depends on this stuff.
Agreed about the safety stash even if you don’t use the expired insulin on a regular basis. I keep two EpiPens that expired the previous year in my earthquake kit, in addition to the two non-expired EpiPens that I have in my daily bag. I read a study somewhere that concluded that EpiPens are still 90% effective even several years after their expiration date. In a true emergency, partial effectiveness is better than death.
Yeah. That’s true even if there is no emergency.
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Funny you would bring up Epipens.
I take my Dad to a lunch group he gets together with Mondays (he’s 87 and declining). There are several retired doctors in this small group of 5 or so friends. We were talking about the drug pricing issue this week.
Reader’s Digest version of the discussion, we talked about FDA regulation and “lockout specs” written into the regs that make the Epipen mechanism the only type than can be approved, thereby giving the manufacturer a monopoly all these years.
One of the guys who was very familiar with this started going in deep about how this mechanism delivers a very precise dosage, and it isn’t simple to get right, blah blah blah. It was like listening to an engineer rather than a doctor.
I stopped him and asked, “when someone’s going into anaphylactic shock from a bee sting, how ciritical is it that the dosage is as accurate and precise as the epipen delivers?” I learned, “not very”.
This is basically what I thought. Under the circumstances where you need epinephrine like that, dosing doesn’t need to be very precise.
Anyway, here’s another example of your friend, Uncle Sam, causing the pricing problem, rather than solving it.