Pumping Saline.

Thursday of last week, I attended a pump training day and was set up with saline for the weekend to get used to wearing the device. 

I arrived at the community centre to discover that I was missing part of my delivery (good start!) - I'd received the pump, and the cannulas, tubing, cartridges, batteries etc that came with it, but I hadn't received the training box. I didn't even realise I was missing anything, but the rep from Accu-Chek who was also at the pump training day made a phone call, and it was arranged that what was missing would be delivered before 10am the next day (and they mean before 10am - I believe there was a delivery man knocking on my front door at 8.45am! How's that for service?!)

I learnt all about priming the insulin pump, how to bolus, how to find out what various error messages mean, how to draw up a cartridge (albeit of saline) and my meter was programmed with my basal rates and insulin to carb ratio (thanks to what looked like various calculations done by my DSN). 

After a long day, I left, pump in my pocket, rather relieved that it was only pumping saline, as I could hardly remember anything!

I woke up Friday morning to find that my cannula had come out during the night. Very relieved to only be on saline! So I got to do a couple of cannula changes over the weekend. 

Wearing the pump on my person has been...interesting. I was given a bra pouch, and clipping the pump to my bra strap has been a great place to wear it. I also spent Sunday night cutting little holes in the pockets of my jeans so that I could feed the tubing down the inside of my trousers. The tubing length I currently have is 50cm, and I am a short person (5ft1"!) so it's much easier for me to hide the excess down the inside of my trousers than it is to have it hanging out from underneath my top!

Another problem I've had is getting the cannulas to stick! As I've already said, one cannula had completely come off Thursday night/Friday morning, and the one I put in yesterday morning at clinic is already coming loose round the edges! Any advice on that front will be greatly appreciated!

Other than that, things were pretty smooth-sailing. I have a feeling things will be different now I'm on insulin though. 

But that will be a whole other blog post!