So farewell Lantus

Lantus looks nothing like this

In preparation for starting on Englebert “The Pump” Pumperdinck next week, I’ve put in my last evening dose of Lantus as I move to sticking my long-acting insulin in the morning for the next week.

I’m going to be connected to Englebert sometime during the morning of 2 November and so I obviously don’t want any background Lantus swishing about my veins. I usually stick in my Lantus at about 7.30pm and as, in theory, it lasts 24 hours or so I need to move to a morning injection so it’s all gone by pump-connecting time.

As I find Lantus takes a few days to adjust to dose changes I’m doing this week early and over several days – gradually reducing the evening dose while increasing the morning dose. I say “gradually” but as I’m doing this over two days, it’s not – in fact – that gradual. You readers just have to allow for a little bit of exaggeration for the purposes of dramatic tension.

So, as I was saying, yesterday was the last evening Lantus injection. I’m sort of pre-programmed to think “Ah, it’s seven thirty – Lantus time!” so it’s going to be odd not doing it.

But will I miss Lantus? No, of course not.

Lantus (and its cousin Levemir) are generally a pain in bum (well, stomach to be precise) as they’re just not wildly consistent. I found Lantus peaked at about 4 hours after injection and then tailed off somewhere around the 22 hour mark. That was fine once I worked out that’s what it did, as I could then adjust accordingly. But as with everything diabetes, it took a tonne of trial and error before I worked it out. Bah!

Also to its eternal shame Lantus came with the worst pen ever created by mankind – the Autopen 24. Tacky, nasty and plastic, the Autopen could only do double units (no fine tuning dosages for you, diabetic peon!) and inspired nothing but misery and despond in any diabetic unfortunate enough to use one.

The pre-filled SoloStars are hardly much better. I think I just hate disposable pens – they feel cheap and nasty and they will never ever, ever come close to winning some fancy design prize. As gadgets are the only good aspect of diabetes, this is actually more important than most non-diabetics think.

So there we have it – a final week of long-acting insulin to go and a farewell to Lantus. No flowers please.