I owe you a detailed description of this week’s meeting with the insulin pump manager and my health care team, but that may have to wait until the weekend.  (If running on grad school vapors was a thing, it would definitely be “my thing.”  Real life beckons at the moment).

In the meantime, for those of you who reached out to offer help and to commiserate upon reading Broken Record, first of all I want to sincerely thank you again.  Your words of encouragement, sharing of the blog post, and overall viewership of that piece really helped to keep me afloat and to work to fix these problems.  And you also taught me that if I do not fix the pump problems, that is okay, too.  Life will go on, and I will adjust accordingly.  Many of you have done so already; thank you for paving the way.  I felt your virtual hugs for many days, and that support is something that I will carry in my heart for a long, long time.

Until I can write a lengthier post, I do want to provide updates, especially for those of you who are going through what I am/was with the insulin pump recently.  The following are just a few positive things to consider if you are/were in my shoes with the pump:

1.) Try switching insulin types in the pump.

Novolog has made an enormous difference for me.  I am not sure why my body/pump decided not to get along with Humalog recently, but it was a very nasty divorce process.  There were lots of tears and the neighbors definitely give us weird looks when we walk by now.

Sometimes just testing the waters with something new can give your body and mind the break that they need to re-group. I have witnessed a very positive difference in my blood sugar numbers since the insulin swap-out.  And mentally, even if the insulin type switch is solely placebo effect, I will take any positive change at this point.

2.) Bubbles

Novolog has some bubbles, too, but not to the same extent as what I witnessed with the millions of tiny, feisty, stubborn Humalog bubbles. Novolog’s bubbles are bigger and fewer, allowing for the insulin in the reservoir to continue to do its job and to squeak by the bubbles.  This is just my experience at this point in time, but so far, so good.  More to come in a future blog post…

3.) Ask and you shall receive.

I asked for the doc’s help regarding my issues, and I was blown away by their feedback. I also semi-harassed Medtronic and my health care team to troubleshoot with me, and, to their credit, they heard me out.  They set up meetings quickly, they yielded multiple phone calls, they read lengthy emails, and they all agreed that something had to be done.  In the past I spent my hours and days wallowing in the idea that “Life might just have to be like this on the pump.”  Then I saw many of you living well with diabetes and realized that I was horribly mistaken.  You were living with diabetes, and you were doing so gracefully and successfully given the rebellious nature of a major organ.  I, on the other hand, was stuck in the mud with my wheels spinning, living without direction in my diabetic journey.

Once I admitted this, acknowledged that what was going on was not okay, and asked for assistance, the burden did not feel so heavy and so lonely. As of today, I am in the “icing my back” stage, rehabbing from carrying the cumbersome load of previous insulin pump issues.  But I am standing a little taller, my head is held a little higher, and my heart is definitely bursting for having you all to bear witness to the struggle and to cheer from the sidelines along the road to getting better.

I will forever be humbled by all of the hands in the health care pot that reached in, without hesitation, to help in my time of suffering.

Thank you…