I was this close… THIS close!

I was so close to getting a perfect-100 mg/dl, for four days in a row.  So close…

Sunday:

Monday:

Faster than a speeding bolus

I am not a medical professional and this is not medical advice. People who think the internet can substitute for real medical attention can find themselves in a boatload of trouble. Like this woman. So be smart, and talk to your own doctor before making any rash decisions, mmmkay?

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Super Bolus, personified

At the beginning of Diabetes Blog Week, I made a passing comment about the Super Bolus. That seemed to generate quite a bit of interest in the comments, and I promised to write more about it. So, here’s my attempt at explaining what it is and how I use it.

I’ll get my obligatory jab at the FDA out of the way now, proclaiming that this feature might already be programmed into pumps if it didn’t first require decades of research and clinical studies, volumes of reports and charts and data, and a healthy dose of ambition and luck. Needless to say, it has none of those things, hence my italicized warning at the top.

Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars

Since starting this diabetes-themed blog over a year ago, the inclusion of musical references has been a recurring theme.

• Lyrics from the Beatles have appeared…
  …twice.
• I wove Meat Loaf into a teenage memory…
  …and considered swapping my disease for Bon Jovi’s.
• A Credence Clearwater Revival song led to my first DOC Meetup…
  …and running into a long-lost high-school classmate was like Peaches reuniting with Herb.
•  A catchy little ditty from Blues Traveler sang the praises of automatic data logging…
  …while a Melissa Etheridge lyric titled a post about my great-aunt’s funeral.
• Although I shamelessly made a mockery of Canada’s national anthem…
  …some boys from Kansas knew exactly how I managed to Carry On.

Even the very name of this blog is inspired by a Grammy Award-winner’s song title.

But today, after reading another blog post today on SurfaceFine, I thought of a song that I used to listen to when I needed inspiration. A song about all the stuff I had put off until tomorrow — a tomorrow that has yet to come.

De-mystifying the motor errors

Before Diabetes Blog Week started, you may recall that I was whining a bit about insulin pump motor errors.

Well, I don’t know what caused them – and Medtronic has certainly been willing to work with me so I don’t end up in a potentially troublesome situation (i.e. like Swampy, but asking “Where’s my Insulin?”), but I’ve decided to make a few changes on my own, just in case. But first…

Every time I’ve had a problem with my Revel, I wax nostalgia about my old Medtronic 515 which worked for years without even a hiccup. What’s different about that pump and this one? Well, first of all, the older one had much less precision with insulin delivery. I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but the old one only gave me the choice of one digit beyond the decimal point, while the newer one gives me a choice of at least two. That’s a tenfold increase in precision right there if you’re talking bolus.  But if you’re in the basal-domain, take the hourly basal and divide it by sixty minutes (or however often the pump delivers pieces of basal) and you’ve got some really tight tolerances.

Maybe those tighter tolerances mean a better ability to detect when the pump falls out of those tolerances? Though the official definition of a Motor Error is vague and circular at best,  The best definition I’ve heard of a motor error is that it occurs when the piston doesn’t line up where it’s expected. It makes sense to me, so I’m sticking with it.

Wordless Wednesday: New NextLink meter case [updated]

Remember when I called (twice) to request a new Contour NextLink meter case?

The new one is blue (or some other color, if you prefer)