1) I have an endocrinologist appointment next week, so I went to get blood taken today. The lab tech poked around inside my left arm for a fair while, almost enough to make me mildly queasy, but it didn't bother me. Eventually she gave up and asked if I had ever had it taken from my hand. This took me back to the olden days! Up until I was about 18, they took the blood from the back of my hand with a butterfly needle. It filled me with warm fuzzies. But no! Rather than the back part of my hand where they were always successful, she shot the needle right above my index knuckle - it's dark and a little bit bruisy.
2)I had been wanting to try a new infusion site for a while - the arm! I couldn't up until now because the tubing seemed just not quite long enough - it could reach from my arm to my pocket, but not if I reached for anything... In my latest shipment of medical supplies, I got the longer tubing set - not just a bit longer, but nearly twice as long... I'm dangling a fair bit!
Anyway, some things are difficult to do with one hand - clapping, tying shoes, etc. Well, inserting an infusion set is DEFINITELY one of those things! It doesn't help that I was using the more difficult of the two infusion sets - with the Silhouette, you can't remove the adhesive backing before using the insertion device like you can with the Quick-set. If you try, the stickiness gets stuck to the device and that's hard to fix even with both hands!
I got it all set up and the insertion went fine, but then I had trouble removing the set from the device. Trying to remove it was a terrible mess, I was accidentally moving the needle all around inside my arm... I got frustrated and pulled it out and reinserted it by hand. Much better, BUT then I was having trouble taking the adhesive backing off with only one hand - all of this is taking place on the back of my left arm. The tugging at the set to get the backing off was, once again, not appreciated by my arm.
Long story short, I got it in and stuck! It is a little tender, but oh well.
My sugars were a little higher than they should have been before putting in the new set, so of course my sugars sky-rocketed after the first bolus... The sugars are moving down, giving evidence that the insulin IS working, but not as fast or effectively as I would like. Nevertheless, I have no ketones and I'm comfortable going to bed with it in.
After all that hassle, I'm damn well not wasting this one until it has proven itself useless!
I'll be leaving EARLY Friday morning to go into Toronto for business and pleasure. I have a meeting with my thesis adviser and then I will be visiting with wonderful friends for the rest of the weekend. I'm not sure how long I will be staying - it will depend on how inspiring and invigorating I find Toronto to be this time around.
The thesis is coming along. I finished some of those ground-work chunks and I've been doing some of the creative stuff the last few days. It isn't as immediately rewarding as I had hoped, but it is still getting better.
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