The Little Pump That Could…Sort Of.

This post is by Lesley!

It was as if the world was playing a practical joke on me…except it wasn’t funny and it certainly wasn’t practical.

I was simply going about my business at work when I heard the triple beep from my insulin pump. The triple beep usually means two things in my life – either my pump is suspended so I can shower or its the “get lucky” beep and its being suspended because its not wanted in the bed. This particular alarm indicated a problem with the pump’s motor. I didn’t even know my pump had a motor! If I thought about it for two seconds, I would have figured it out – but there are certain parts of our Insulin pumps that should not “speak” unless spoken to – usually it does it’s thing and leaves me alone, but Wednesday was different. It beeped and I frantically looked on Minimed’s website for what this foreign alarm meant. As most of you know, the alarm section of the Minimed website is very user friendly (I am usually sarcastic but I mean this seriously.) It lists the alarm type and tells you the action that needs to be taken. Most alarms have a very practical suggestion – change your site, get a new battery, or give me some attention because you haven’t touched me in 12 hours. The suggestion for the alarm I was getting said – Call Minimed immediately! Like a good little Act1 member, instead of calling Minimed, I emailed the listserve – and you lovely ladies told me the same thing. Call Minimed. So – I freaking called them.

They were incredible (again, I usually am sarcastic when I compliment insurance companies, diabetes supply companies, etc but I mean this!) and they immediately sent me a new pump which would arrive the next morning by 10am. Great I thought – only 20 hours of no Insulin pump and then I’ll be great. Against the advice of the Minimed rep, I kept my pump on because my blood sugar seemed to be coming down. I sort of figured out that the “motor problem” with my pump must have had to do with giving large amounts of insulin at once. So I gave myself a large bolus in several small increments and my sugar came down. Awesome, I beat the system and could wear my slightly damaged pump until the morning.

Wrong…obviously.

During dinner with friends, my pump started beeping again. I assumed it was the motor issue and ignored it, but it persisted so I checked the screen – low battery. This I could handle; a low battery is probably the easiest Diabetes problem to fix (in theory.) So, I confidently got a nickel from my wallet and started to open the battery cartridge. Um, it was jammed. Like, completely unable to be opened -jammed. Perhaps I wasn’t strong enough so I had Matt try. Fail. Then I had our friends try using whatever utensils we found on the table or around the restaurant. The thing was stuck and the battery was slowly losing its life causing me massive amounts of anxiety. On the way home, Matt came up with several plans – we’ll use a wrench, a screwdriver, a metal nail file…none of which worked. Meanwhile, the beeping almost pushed me over the edge. Cue air punching. Cue stomping around the apartment. Hm, I’ll call Minimed again.

The woman’s suggestion at Minimed was to make sure I was turning the top of the battery cartridge to the left. If she was standing in front of me giving me this advice, I would have punched her face in. And I’m not a violent person.

We tried EVERYTHING. It was stuck and because I had a low reservoir, I had to then fake change my site to mindfuck the pump into thinking it was full of Insulin.

Well folks, THE PUMP IS STILL ALIVE. It’s like the little pump that could, or the Energizer pump, or the pump that never sleeps. It’s still freaking alive and beeping about every ten minutes. I have wanted to throw it across the room or off the balcony or beat the shit out of it like they do to the fax machine in the movie Office Space. But then I picture myself flushing like $6000 down the toilet and I resist.

My pump “broke” on Wednesday and I am writing this blog posting on TUESDAY. It’s still beeping. The battery is still claiming to be low. The pump is still telling me I need to finish priming the damn thing.

It’s all unreal and infuriating and mind boggling, but also…sort of comical