Saturday, May 19, 2012

3 cannula fails, in a row.

Articles - Diabetes Articles
Wednesday, 03 November 2010 07:33
Saturday morning at Friends for Life, and I was supposed to be going to a talk being given by Gary Scheiner ("Strike the Spike" was the name of the talk).

Except, I'd done a set change that morning and my levels had shot up into the teens despite a 170% temp basal for 2 hours. Tom (who features in some of the photos in my previous posts!) found himself in exactly the same position. We decided to change sets, again, to get things back on track.

I took out my cannula, to find it very bent. Tom took his out and blood

squirted everywhere...he'd hit a vein or something! New cannulas in, correction in, off we went.

Only, we didn't. Now, please don't ask me why I didn't correct by pen earlier; truthfully, I don't know. I should have, but I didn't, and I can't answer why I didn't. In a way it just didn't occur to me.

I continued to rise, hitting 19.0 (342). I changed sets, again (so set change #2 of the day). And put in another correction. Only, an hour later, I was still on the rise, hitting 22.0 (396) at 12.30pm. By this point, I was feeling very sick and clammy, and according to one of the mums there I looked "very grey and ill". Mmmm, nice. Not. I'm guessing by that point I was ketotic.

I whacked in 10 units by pen, and changed sets again. I went slightly overboard with the 10, but from my past experiences I know that when ketones get involved I need to get a LOT of insulin in, pretty quickly. I took a short nap through lunch and by the time the afternoon sessions were up at running I had dropped to 6.9 (in an hour!). That's a massive drop (although it felt so good to be back in range), so I had some more carbs *cough*a chocolate bar*cough*. I sipped on some low-carb (5g/100ml) drinks over the next couple of hours and dodged a hypo.

Finally set #4 worked. Just for those who are curious, the first 2 sets that failed were Medtronic Mios, and the third was a Medtronic QuickSet. The fourth one which worked was also a QuickSet. It was a really rough morning to be honest, and I really hated diabetes for preventing me in taking part in the conference that morning. Part of me had to see the irony that I had a huge Diabetes cock-up at a Diabetes conference, though!

 
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