A few months have gone by since I last wrote a post.  Unfortunately work has been insane and the Holidays have taken up the rest of my free time.  I haven’t gone running in weeks, however, I still squeeze in a quick elliptical or stationary bike session when I can. The good news is that I’m beginning to act more and more like a diabetic, according to my doc.  My A1C is the lowest it’s been in at least 4 years, 8.5!!! I was hoping to reach 7 by the end of the year, but I know that my goal isn’t that far off. I’ve been working really hard and doing everything I can to stay active, eat the right foods, check my blood, give corrections for highs and boluses for meals!

It’s really frustrating when you’re spending so much time and energy to maintain control and then something out of your control, like your pump breaking, throws it all off.  My blood sugars haven’t spiked (and then stayed high) as much as they used to.  Now instead of once a day or a few times a week, it’s a couple times a month.  I know exactly what I was doing or what I ate to make it go so high, before there were just too many HI’s to be able to do that.

Last week my pump ran out of insulin.  That’s never a big deal.  I still hate changing it, but it only takes a few minutes and then I’m back to doing whatever I was doing.  This time, right after my NO DELIVERY reading (meaning NO INSULIN), I got a MOTOR ERROR reading (meaning BROKEN PUMP).  This has happened to me before.  It sucks.  It used to happen all the time when I worked near a massive magnet that liked to destroy my pump. It means that I’m giving myself injections for the rest of the day and well into the next one, and waking up every couple hours during the night to make sure my blood sugar is OK.  It means I need to order a new insulin pump.

First thing I did was text my doctor.  I don’t know what my pump settings are and because I was right in the middle of refilling my reservoir, I couldn’t access them.  I also had no idea how much Lantus I needed as I’ve never used it before.  Back when I used injections to maintain my blood sugars, I used NPH as my long lasting insulin and that was about 12 years ago. I got a Lantus pen prescription that has been sitting in my fridge for a few months just waiting for something like this to happen.  The detachable needles scared me (I’ve had diabetes for over 20 years but I’m still a giant scaredy cat) so I used the pen as a vial of insulin and used one of my regular syringes to draw it out.  Then I mixed it with Humalog and called Minimed. Of course the first thing they did was try to troubleshoot my pump (it never works) and when we realized that it was completely cooked, we ordered a new one.  I made sure to eat a very low carb dinner and then I set my alarm throughout the night to wake me up so I could check my sensor.  I think that I handled the situation well besides the fact that my blood sugar read HI for about 2 hours.  Other than that spike, the only time my blood sugar got really high was after a 2 hour hike and even then it only went up to about 362 and slowly made it’s way down.

In general I’m thinking and acting more and more like a diabetic.  Now when I travel I think about how many supplies I need and then pack extra.  Long past are the days where I’d get somewhere only to realize I’m out of insulin (that happened when I went to Vegas about 5 years ago, we missed our flight, had to stay another day and I had about 10 units of insulin to last me until we got home).  I don’t drive unless I know what my blood sugar is, and usually it’s fine.  This year, for Thanksgiving, I didn’t have any dessert.  And not because I was depriving myself, but because I genuinely wasn’t hungry or craving anything sweet.  My next appointment is in 2 days.  Fortunately my doctor already knows about my MOTOR ERROR episode, but even if she didn’t she’s so pleased with how well I’m doing I don’t think she’d be too upset.