OmniPod

There was the researching, and the chats with the doc,. There was the mental tug-o-war between my daily injection comfort zone and my need for more flexibility, and now, like the quickness of a self-inserting cannula, I am pumping insulin by way of the OmniPod.

For nearly four years now I have been ducking into bathroom stalls, pit-stopping on highway shoulders, and seeking out keen new places to take daily shots. The mind saturated planning and mental mapping was wearing thinner than Trump's hairdo. Today I revel in the notion that I have not taken an injection in over 48 hours. No new bruises for me. No searching for insulin pens and their needles. No wrinkles of injection pain canvassing my skin.

My first day pumping insulin got off to a sloppy start. I blew through two pods right out of the gate. One was not my fault- an occlusion occurred (followed by an obnoxious alarm and urged message of pod removal). The other issue happened when the pod was adhered to my upper thigh. I was sitting down during attachment and the adhesive started to give under the pressure of walking around afterwards. A hot shower combined with overstressed adhesive finished off that pod in no time.

Third pod is a charm. I freed it from the packaging, along with the filling syringe, and plunged 215 units of Novolog into the guts of the compact body. Guided by the wireless handheld PDM (personal diabetes manager), the pod self-primed, filtering out any air bubbles, and asked me to place the new pod on my desired infusion locale. I stood up this time, leaving the skin un-taut, and plunked it on my upper thigh. The cannula automatically inserted with a rapid click. I flinched, but not from pain. Basal insulin infusion followed suit, and off I went.

Now I am in the process of fine-tuning my insulin to carb ratio, basal rates, correction rate, all the stuff that makes pumping insulin so effective and individually molded. There is great potential for me on this new pumping path. Onward- to see what I can make of it.