Category Archives: Diabetes Supplies

Sigh. No, It’s Not a Jug for Collecting Urine or a Giant Vat of Cream…

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My husband and I were out on date night last night and stopped at the market to pick up a bottle of water for the movies when I remembered I had a prescription of test strips waiting to be picked up.

I get my strips 450 at a time, so it usually comes in a pretty big pharmacy bag but I guess I always either go through the drive through, or have a shopping cart or diaper bag to stash it in…not tonight (on date night).

Pharmacy_bag

It’s like a brown lunch bag filled to the brim!

Tonight my husband and I split up and while I went to get bottles of water, he went to the pharmacy.  When we met back in the middle of the store he hands me this giant (obviously pharmacy) bag…sigh.

I know I shouldn’t care what people think, and really I don’t but who wants to walk around with that?!  We live in a smallish town and often bump into people we know (or have seen around before) at the market and you just know no one’s thinking

“Hey there’s a type 1 diabetic (not her fault, by the way) who must take really good care of herself because she sure does test a lot!”.  Nope, they’re thinking, “What in the world could possibly be in that huge prescription bag?  Must be some kind of strange and unpleasant plastic apparatus or a very large vat of mysterious cream….eww!”.

I know, it’s a very small matter in the grand scheme of D-care and all the crap that comes with it…but all the same, even though I like to try to keep “green” by using my own shopping bags, next time I find myself picking up a script that big with no where to stash it, I think I’ll ask for a bag.

Site Rotation Save Me

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So, I’ve always been guilty of not rotating my pump sites enough, in fact you could call me downright resistant.  I guess when I find something I like, I just want to stick with it and after all, I do ask my Endo about it occasionally and he always replies in his usual fashion “All looks good Julie”.

Pregbelly

And this pic is only my 7th month…yikes!

For years, I used to use my belly for my Omnipod and rotate through about 6-8 sites but last year, during my pregnancy, I had an enormous belly and a lot of discomfort with my pump, so I started relying on only two sites.

Since then (it’s been 13 months!), I guess I just got lazy, or caught up with putting life ahead of routine diabetes management…we’ve all been there right?  Frankly, I still have 28lbs of baby weight to lose and the old sites (which were largely around my waistband) just aren’t comfortable anymore.

Well, I started noticing that it looked my insulin needs were increasing?!  It didn’t make sense:  I was breastfeeding, not overweight (technically), active, hadn’t changed my eating habits, other medications, etc.  WTH?!

It finally dawned on me that maybe my poor old sites were just worn out.  I Googled it and came across lipohypertrophy and then got scared out of my pants by doing an Image Search for it (fyi, don’t click on this Image Search unless you’re fully ready for the unsettling consequences).  Enough said…site rotation here I come!

Now, I don’t have any signs of lipohypertrophy yet but when I was pregnant, my insulin needs tripled and it makes sense that my insulin absorption rates for those belly sites might have taken a toll.

backpod

I’m currently a proud wearer of a back Omnipod…day two ;)  It has it’s issues and will take some getting used to (especially when I try to carry a backpack)…but my sugars have been much lower, while everything else has stayed pretty much the same (same insulin rates, same diet and activity, same morning and afternoon coffee, same evening glass of wine…you get the picture).  So far this experiment is a success, Phew!

Stay tuned for more pod placement experimentation…