After receiving a message on Facebook, from a fellow T1 asking for my opinion on Omnipod, I realised I hadn't updated my 'MDI to Omnipod' category for quite some time.
So, a long overdue 'life on pump' update...
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I'm lying in bed, it's 03:32am. I woke up with that crappy taste in my mouth. I woke up with that bead of sweat on my neck.
I've woken up like this many times in the past. I have a sip to drink, go to the toilet and back to bed. Except now I have my best pals Omnipod and Libre. I scan myself, 18.1 still, it's been high for about 5 hours and is refusing to come down. I check my insulin on board, 0.00u, and pump some more insulin in to me. Let's hope this one works, can't be bothered with another pod change. That sounds ridiculous doesn't it? I "can't be bothered" to change this little box which keeps me alive. When you have to change this box every (give or take) 72 hours, life flies by. Every 3 days I say the same thing, "Bloody hell!? It's been 3 days again... ALREADY?!". I mean, life went fast before but now it's hypersonic.
I've been on a pump for over a week, it's time to start basal testing. (I can hear the sighs and groans from fellow diabetics).
Any non-diabeters... a brief explanation of basal testing. Firstly, the difference between basal and bolus. Basal is the background insulin. Bolus is the dose of insulin you have for your meal. Basal is background. Bolus is bowl of food. On a pump, you have a basal rate of insulin going in to your body multiple times an hour. With injections, you use a longer acting insulin once, maybe twice a day. Basal testing is done to make sure the background rate of insulin is correct. That way we can work on other things such as carb ratios and correction factors etc, knowing it's not the basal rate making any funny stuff happen. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes over 20 years ago.
When I was younger I only had 2 injections a day, morning and night. Diabetic research developed, theories were proven, I moved to an 'adult clinic' and then I was having 4 injections a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, bedtime. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, bedtime. Repeat. One hectic morning I got to work and my blood sugars were up. I started to panic that I hadn't injected for breakfast and a colleague said, 'How can you not remember?! That's a big thing to forget'. Which I suppose to the average person, it is. To a T1D, that's just 1 out of 1460 injections I'd do in a year. Yesterday I had my "last" injection. |