Shoot Up or Put Up

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by Alison

The good old days

11 May, 2011 in Kit & equipment, Living with diabetes

A vision of sleekness

: Beauty and the obese, plastic beast

Last week I found something in the back of my cupboard that changed my life at the age of 9. Allow me to reminisce…

It’s the late 1980′s. Kylie and Jason have just got married in Neighbours, shellsuits were the nearest to fashionable they’d ever get and Sunday afternoons were spent recording the Top 40 onto cassette from the radio. Amidst all of this, a beautiful apparition showed itself to a young girl with diabetes. She used ugly plastic syringes to stab herself with twice a day and life was ok, but a bit restricted. Then along came…fanfare please…the Novopen! A sleek, elegant piece of marvelousness that allowed her to double the number of times she stabbed herself every day. That’s surely not a good thing I hear you cry? A poor child with twice the number of puncture holes in her body, which monster would advocate such a thing?

This piece of fabulousness meant that the child could eat pretty much what she wanted when she wanted. By injecting 4 times a day (or even more sometimes, shock, horror!) she could adjust her insulin according to what she was doing and what she was eating. And that child had the special knowledge that only the pancreatically-challenged have – injections don’t actually hurt that much – sssh, don’t tell anyone, we’ll lose the sympathy vote. Aged 9, that child had a portion of fish and chips for the first time. Previously there were always too many carbs in it for her to have more than a couple of chips. Now life was good!

That thing of beauty – the Novopen – went with me everywhere. I never left the house without it, because it gave me freedom. If a friend asked me to stay for lunch, I could call home to check and the only question I was asked was “Have you got your pen?”. If I answered yes, I was free! I just needed to be back for my evening injection of long acting via syringe.

My silver, metal Novopen was with me from the age of 9 until I was roughly 22. It survived school, holidays, going away to uni, getting engaged, getting married, starting work, moving house. I discovered the delights of having a partner – if we went out together I could get him to put my pen in his pocket, rather than carrying it myself. Yes, I am easily pleased!

Disaster struck in my early 20’s. It was announced that the slim, slender, elegant, metal Novopen was being replaced by a new generation of obese, plastic siblings. Apparently, my slim little pen didn’t contain enough insulin for the ever growing insulin hungry type 2 market, so it was being replaced by a model that could hold twice as much insulin. From that day on, all pens had extra girth and a certain cheapness about them. To say I was unhappy is like saying I think my pump is just ok. It’s a complete understatement.

Look at the picture, how is replacing the beautiful, stylish, slimline Novopen with an oversized piece of plastic a step forward? Ah, the good old days, when pens were beautiful, remember them?

Tags: injections, kit, mdi, the good old days 17 Comments »

by Alison

Identifying the perfect piece of flesh

2 February, 2011 in Kit & equipment, Living with diabetes

The thing about injections and infusion sets is there are so many options and such a vast selection of flesh to put them in it’s hard to know where to start.

I started young with the whole injection business and with that came a picture of a man/woman/android complete with grids on each injectable area. Each thigh and buttock was divided into 8 squares, the same for the stomach and a grid of 6 on each arm. Then as you injected in each place you coloured in the corresponding square on your man/woman/android. When the picture was complete, thrillingly you got…another picture to start again on. That was my first lesson in quite how monotonous this diabetes thing can be.

But, aside from the repeated disappointment it did set me off on a lifetime of site rotation which is no bad thing. When I stopped using the pictures I did rebel and have been doing so ever since…without the motivation of having some squares to colour in I stopped injecting in my arms. I’ve never liked it; I only did it so I could complete the picture and move on to the next man.

Infusion sets are a bit harder than injections because wherever you choose to stick it, you need to be happy you can live with it there for 3 days. My favourite spot is my lower back. It’s the quiet little cul-de-sac of the body. It’s out the way so I don’t see it if I look in the mirror and there really isn’t much activity or passing traffic to tangle with the set and tubing. It’s perfect. It’s also my favourite spot for CGM sensors so they usually get priority there and infusion sets are relegated to the thigh or buttock. Either is fine but it did take a while to stop me pulling the thing out every time I pulled my pants down. In the early days of thigh/buttock exploration so many toilet trips ended in much cursing and irritation.

The stomach seems to be the spot where most people start with infusion sets. I venture there every now and again for a bit of variety but it’s my second favourite sensor spot so I do like to save it for them.

I use Quicksets on my back, thighs and buttocks and they work really well for me. For my stomach I prefer Silhouettes. While I may be an insulin tart, when it comes to infusion sets I’m quite the young innocent. I found two that work really well for me and I’ve stuck with them.

The final piece of the butchered human injection/infusion set site puzzle is arms. I don’t do arms. At all. Ever. I’ve reached a level of maturity where not even the satisfaction of being able to move on to another picture would make me do arms. Maybe if I was offered diamonds or holidays, or a significant amount of cold hard cash for a fully coloured in virtual person I would consider it, but for now, arms are safe.

What about you? Where do you put yours?

Tags: infusion set, injections, insulin, kit, pump, pump basics 30 Comments »

by Tim

Bad habits

17 September, 2010 in Kit & equipment, Living with diabetes

A diabetic is punished by their DSN for re-using a needle

I used to be a good diabetic. After my diagnosis five years ago I did all the things good diabetics were supposed to.

Such things included changing needles every time I injected, changing my finger pricking lancet every time I check my blood glucose (something my beloved co-writer gently took the piss out of the first time we met up in Edinburgh). From time to time I also commit the heinous act of injecting through clothing. Except, of course, unless I’m wear a crisp dress shirt and dinner jacket – that just ends in disaster every time. Red blood spots on your white shirt – hardly the thing to do in polite society.

These bad habits develop over time and they all come down to laziness. I don’t know about you, but I check my blood glucose about 6, 7 or 8 times a day and inject probably about 5 or 6 times. When I changed my lancet and needles every time I used one I had to carry around enough supplies to last a day or two or three. Said supplies therefore required a bigger case and therefore a bigger man bag. We all like a good man bag but carting round a 70 litre rucksack of supplies is a step too far.

I’ve now gone all minimalist and have a small black pencil case (from Paperchase, don’t you know) to carry about my kit and so I just don’t have room to cart around a tonne of paraphernalia. I really just can’t be bothered lugging so much stuff around every day of my life, so I break best-practice and develop bad habits.

Looking at it objectively there are bad habits and bad habits. Not changing a lancet is perhaps not ideal but I don’t think it presents a major risk. Ditto changing needles. My fingers might be a bit more pepper-potty because of using a slightly more blunt lancet but, hey, life struggles on.

However, really bad habits, such as not bothering to check blood glucose or inject properly bring you into a whole new level of naughtiness and pain. Given that I’m quite fond of my sight, legs, kidneys, etc., I’m content to slip into some bad habits but certainly not down into the depths of true diabetic negligence.

Tags: injections, kit, lancets 15 Comments »

by Tim

The problem with a cure

13 August, 2010 in Living with diabetes

A cure for diabetes is found!

Just imagine if there was a cure for diabetes tomorrow. Say if some mad scientist came up with a magic serum that restored one’s beta cells to full production and health within a day or two. (One imagines said scientist working from some sort of dark, gloomy castle, surrounded by angry storm clouds and frightened villagers, but I digress). That would be pretty cool, no?

I don’t think any of us would doubt that it would be rather nice; but wouldn’t it be rather odd too?

I don’t know about you, but I’m utterly programmed to do diabetes now. At about 7.30pm every evening a little mental alarm goes off in my head to bung in my lantus. Without relying on watches, clocks or alarms, I rarely miss lantus time by more than half an hour nowadays.

I also automatically guesstimate the carbohydrate content of everything on plate from about 50 yards. I can’t help it. I even do it with other people’s food – telling friends that they would need to put in about 9 units for what’s on their plate. Well, that’s what they would need to if, in fact, they were actually diabetic.

The list goes on, I find it bordering on impossible to leave the house without checking I’ve got my kit – finger pricker, insulin and a plentiful supply of fruit pastilles. If I go out without a man bag containing all said kit I feel positively naked.

So I wonder if our mad scientist friend did come up with a magic serum whether we diabetics would need to be gradually weaned off the diabetic way of life and back into normality. The shock of not having to do all these things might just be too great. Perhaps we would have to spend the first few months injecting saline instead of insulin – much in the way that ex-smokers can buy those stupid looking faux cigarettes, giving them the feeling of clutching something cigarette shaped.

Who knows? But if such a serum was invented I wouldn’t be too worried kicking the diabetes habit – I’d be busy fighting my way to the front of the line!

Tags: cure, injections 38 Comments »