Some days I really love my medical devices.
| Can we talk about how terrifyingly Riddler-like that face is? |
Today is not one of those days.
While my basal has been delivering just fine (I was shocked to see a mostly-straight line from overnight, hovering around 95), my bolusing ability has been stunted by some fault within my insulin pump’s lineup. Ever since putting this cartridge in on Wedneday night, my pump has not been able to fully deliver a single bolus. Not of 10 units, not of 5 units, not of 2 units. No boluses.
WHY CAN’T YOU JUST WORK YOU EXPENSIVE LITTLE MACHINE.
I called Tandem’s tech support, and their troubleshooting protocol asks me to disconnect at the leur lock to see if insulin is delivering before it gets to the tubing.
Here’s the kicker: I see why they want to know this, but if I do this process I lose not only the 23 units of insulin in my tubing (I use the really long tubing), but also will have to prime all of those airbubbles that will be introduced into the tubing again, out. That’s easily 53 units of insulin I’ll be wasting, and I feel very uncomfortable with that thought. I don’t like wasting such a precious resource. 53 units is more than a day’s worth of insulin for a lot of people.
If the design of your medical device requires me to squander my limited supply of the only drug that can keep me alive, you may want to rethink that design.
So I guess I’ll be over here injecting for each meal and snack until this cartridge runs out.
Hashtag first world problem.
UPDATE: According to the customer service rep I’ve been working with, Tandem Diabetes Care is sending me a new “goodwill” box of cartridges and a prepaid shipping label so I can mail back the faulty cartridge for “investigation purposes”. Good on ya, Tandem. Let’s hope these work.