Fun times (not)

Well I had a fun evening last night...

I was making dinner, when I went to drain the potatoes and somehow managed to pour boiling water over my hand. Luckily, I was next to the sink, so I quickly stuck my hand under the cold tap, but it hurt like hell. I dealt with it as best i could, wrapped my hand in a wet towel, and kept going with dinner.

When dinner was ready, I tested my BG and discovered it was 15.4. I was a bit surprised, since I'd been fine a few hours earlier, and my basals are ok over that period. I tested for ketones (don't ask me why, the rules are supposed to be that you check if you have two consecutive readings over 14, but it was such a random high I wanted to check) and got a reading of 0.6... Now I know that's not particularly high, but it's the highest ketone reading I've had in years, so I was a bit concerned.

I checked the pump and my site, and everything seemed fine, so I figured it was maybe a reaction to the burn, and bolused for a correction and my food (yes, I know, I'm a bad diabetic eating when I was so high, but I was hungry dammit), and then felt something....odd at my infusion site. I put my hand down to the site, and it felt damp, and I realised I could smell insulin on my fingers.

Oh joy.

I changed out the site, put on a 200% temp basal, and then tried to decide how much, if any of the bolus I'd received. I decided to assume that I'd got most of it (the site was damp, but not *wet*), and just keep an eye on my BGs. I checked a couple of hours later and I'd come down to 12, so I went to bed and set an alarm and was 5.4 at 3 am, and then 6.4 when I woke up.

I'm not entirely sure how that worked out so well, but I'm not going to complain!

What a difference a site makes...

This is what my infusion site currently looks like:

Lovely, yes? :P I put in a new site yesterday, and it hurt, which isn't normal. It was one of those ones where I knew something was wrong immediately, so I took it out, it bled, I swore, and then I reloaded the set and put it in somewhere else. This one was absolutely fine, so I filled the cannula, and wandered off merrily to have dinner. I was sitting down about fifteen minutes later, when I twisted round to get something, and felt a funny sort of *tug* at my site. "Hmm, that's odd," I thought, and when I pulled my shirt up to look at it, the adhesive bit was peeling away at both sides. I tried in vain to encourage it to sick back down, and when that failed, I planted my hand over it and went in search of some plasters. And so I ended up with the patchwork job you see above. The site seems to be fine, and so far the plasters have held up to a shower and sleeping, so I think it'll be ok. It just doesn't look the prettiest of sites! ;)

Speaking of sites, these are my BGs for the last couple of days:

You can click on the image to get a clearer picture, but the blue and red are Monday and Tuesday's BGs, and the dark green is today. The orange background is results above 10 mmol/l, and the bottom axis is time starting from midnight. As you can see, I've been having lots of fun! I put a new site in on Sunday, which seemed to be ok, and then I woke up at 16 on Monday morning, a number that really did not want to come down. I pondered various reasons for it, and decided to keep an eye on things and see how they progressed. I wasn't making ketones, my BG came down eventually, and the site looked and felt fine. Tuesday morning I again woke up high, and wondered if my insulin requirements had suddenly and dramatically changed overnight. I decided to just change the site later that day when I changed my cartridge to see what happened first, and I'm very glad that I did!!

When I took out the old site, it bled rather a lot, so I figure that's what was giving me the problems. I also think the cannula was just a little bit kinked, probably contributing to the highs. I don't usually have any problems with sites (this post not withstanding!), so it's quite stunning to be able to have a visual representation of what a difference it can make. I've always been told that when a site goes wrong, it's very obvious, and the one time I had a bent cannula, I was able to tell within hours as my BG shot up and ketones started to appear. This time, however, while in hindsight I can tell the site was bad, it wasn't obvious to me that that was what was causing the problem. I'm sure we've all had days when we ride the BG rollercoaster for unknown reasons, and I wondered if I was sick, if it was hayfever, if it was hormones...so many things could have pushed my numbers up like that. The thing that really got me was that I wasn't making any ketones, so I knew I was getting *some* insulin. Oh well, live and learn I guess!