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Hi all,
I thought I'd share a story here of a mistake I made yesterday just as a wee warning for others. The mistake was simple, it only took 1 second of not thinking, but it ended with my wife having to rush me to A&E.
Backstory
So for the last week my basal insulin requirement has been around 30% higher than usual and I've been trying to work out what might be behind it - is it a honeymoon period ending? (maybe) is it a dodgy infusion site (nope - changed it several times) is it a change of activity level (nope - I'm a creature of habit).
Then I got the idea that maybe the insulin in the vial was bad - I had started a new vial just at the start of the week - so I decided to change the insulin by putting a new resevoir in my pump. As I had just changed by infusion site, I thought I would save some time by only changing the resevoir and connecting it through the same infusion site.
The Mistake
So I took out the old resevoir, attached a new one and clicked it back into the pump.
What Went Wrong
Thats when I felt insulin getting pushed into my stomach, and it felt like a lot. I quickly pulled out the resevoir and instantly realised my mistake, I hadn't rewound and reset the pin that pushes the base of the resevoir to push insulin up through the infusion set - its a medtonic 670g (the mechanism is a bit like a colgate toothpaste thingy). I looked at my old vial it and tried to compare it against how much I thought I'd filled up the new one, that difference was how much insulin I might have just pushed up into me. A quick bit of maths told me that it was waaaaay too much. (Rather than say numbers here, I'll just say that it looked about 20x - 30x a normal dinner time bolus).
What Went Right
Well I quickly realised how much trouble I might be in, I grabbed some carbs, ran and got my wife, grabbed some more carbs, started explaining what had happened and we decided to rush to hospital and managed to get through the 5 hours of insulin activity time before I was kinda in the clear again. It was weird that later that same day, the crises was basically over.
So yeah, I dunno what the moral of this story is - be careful I guess. To be honest it was such as simple mistake that I'm not sure I would judge anybody else for making it. I'd never heard of somebody doing it before so hopefully just hearing this will stop somebody else making the same mistake.
Doug
I thought I'd share a story here of a mistake I made yesterday just as a wee warning for others. The mistake was simple, it only took 1 second of not thinking, but it ended with my wife having to rush me to A&E.
Backstory
So for the last week my basal insulin requirement has been around 30% higher than usual and I've been trying to work out what might be behind it - is it a honeymoon period ending? (maybe) is it a dodgy infusion site (nope - changed it several times) is it a change of activity level (nope - I'm a creature of habit).
Then I got the idea that maybe the insulin in the vial was bad - I had started a new vial just at the start of the week - so I decided to change the insulin by putting a new resevoir in my pump. As I had just changed by infusion site, I thought I would save some time by only changing the resevoir and connecting it through the same infusion site.
The Mistake
So I took out the old resevoir, attached a new one and clicked it back into the pump.
What Went Wrong
Thats when I felt insulin getting pushed into my stomach, and it felt like a lot. I quickly pulled out the resevoir and instantly realised my mistake, I hadn't rewound and reset the pin that pushes the base of the resevoir to push insulin up through the infusion set - its a medtonic 670g (the mechanism is a bit like a colgate toothpaste thingy). I looked at my old vial it and tried to compare it against how much I thought I'd filled up the new one, that difference was how much insulin I might have just pushed up into me. A quick bit of maths told me that it was waaaaay too much. (Rather than say numbers here, I'll just say that it looked about 20x - 30x a normal dinner time bolus).
What Went Right
Well I quickly realised how much trouble I might be in, I grabbed some carbs, ran and got my wife, grabbed some more carbs, started explaining what had happened and we decided to rush to hospital and managed to get through the 5 hours of insulin activity time before I was kinda in the clear again. It was weird that later that same day, the crises was basically over.
So yeah, I dunno what the moral of this story is - be careful I guess. To be honest it was such as simple mistake that I'm not sure I would judge anybody else for making it. I'd never heard of somebody doing it before so hopefully just hearing this will stop somebody else making the same mistake.
Doug
