Shenanigans!

Things have been crazy, diabetes wise, this week, and it's not even my blood sugars that are doing it

It's the robot parts.  All the robot parts have conspired against me.  My pancreas is mad that something else is doing its job, even though it can't be bothered, really.  So it's kicking and screaming.  I'm sure you know someone like that?  Won't work, but bitter if someone else tries to?  I think it's an insecurity issue, and all my pancreas needs is a little therapy.

First of all, late Tuesday night, technically 2:52 Wednesday morning, my Dexcom decided to alert.

Not high. Not low.  No, the transmitter battery is dying.  I need a new battery.

Blatantly stolen from the Dexcom website

 It decides that ALMOST 3 a.m. is the perfect time to tell me this.

So Wednesday a.m. I dig through my email, because I know I've saved one from the distributor that sends me all things pump and Dex related, and ah, yes, there it is.  The one that tells me if I ever see this alert, to RUN FOR MY LIFE, because the DEX WILL KILL ME.

Or...to call them stat, because I have a week left before this thing dies completely.

So I call them.  They refer me to equipment specialists.  They tell me if nobody contacts me in the next couple of days, to call them back. I sit and wait.  (This company has always been very nice to me, but it does business like it's 1999 or something, which is when I worked in customer service.  You can't check on the status of anything online, you must call them for everything.  I actually think it's probably HIPAA related, and that everything medical related is consistently 10-15 years behind the times.)

And for the next 3 nights, the SAME ALERT  pops up, at exactly the SAME TIME.

"HEY!  HEIDI!  IT'S 2:52 A.M.!  DID YOU KNOW YOU NEED A NEW TRANSMITTER?"

It's not annoying at all.  I mean, diabetes doesn't keep me awake enough, I need a new alarm that orders me to call people at 3 a.m.

Friday I call them back.  They say it's "pending benefits" which means they are trying to get my insurance to pay for it. "But don't worry.  You have until Wednesday before you'll need a new one.  We'll get this out to you in time".

 Let me save you some time and just say "they ain't gonna pay" because it is January and my deductible isn't met yet.  But I have a sneaking suspicion this'll do the job, and come February 1st, that deductible is nicely met.  Which means I will have to dish out a pretty penny for this transmitter.  A VERY pretty penny.

From Doodle Du Jour

Have I mentioned the pump part yet?  No?  Well, here it is in a nutshell.  Whenever I go really high, and rage bolusing isn't working, I pull the infusion set and replace it.  And I was recently on a very happy making vacation, (which is a completely different blog post altogether, prepping for and navigating that) and it was on a lovely boat, and there was a lot of food, and a lot of shot in the dark boluses, and well, more than a few infusion sets got pulled when they were perfectly fine.

Traveling light is a thing of the past.

Which leads to..I ran out of infusion sets before my auto refill showed up.  (It was shipped on Wednesday, though, and seriously, should be here!) And I haven't been pumping long enough to hoard stuff.  (It'll happen, though, no worries).  And this last one I had been wearing for a week and today it finally said "ENOUGH!"  and pulled out.  It was getting super itchy anyway.

And today, being Saturday, is the day the transmitter decided its lifespan was over, and the only reading I could get from Dexcom was "out of range".  When the receiver is in my pocket.  For hours.

A week, my donkey.

So there I am, no Dex, no pump really, and so I do the only thing there is TO DO.

I call another Type 1.  Well, technically his mom, who is my friend, and I beg a couple of infusion sets off of her.

She comes through like a champ, and even though I couldn't successfully break into her house to get them, she drove over an hour out of her way to get them to me, because SHE ROCKS.

She gets them to me as I am driving to a soccer game, and I give no thought to what random soccer moms think of me stabbing my stomach with this weird thing, I am GETTING THAT PUMP CONNECTED.

(This post has a lot of caps.  My apologies)

I set the basal at 50% for a couple of hours, because I took a few units of Levemir to cover those hours of no basal, and I didn't want to go low, especially without the added security of the Dex arrows to watch.

I get connected, sit down, take a deep breath, a long drag of Diet Dr. Pepper, and pull out my monitor to test my sugars, with the plan of testing every half hour or so, just to see where I'm headed with the different things going on today.

And behold!  I am out of test strips.  Pull out my purse, and of course! The extras in my purse are for the old mini, not the new Verio I've been using now, in anticipation of switching to the Sync.  I am now officially stuck for the next 3 hours with no way to test my sugars, no dexcom to rely on, and a wonky basal schedule.  Perfect.

Shenanigans.

P.S.  I was 180 mg/dl when I got home.  Not too shabby for the day I've had, really.

P.P.S.  This is really why we need a biological cure.  Devices are not foolproof.  Also, it's exhausting, being tied to stuff that your life depends on 24/7.  EXHAUSTING.