This is a story about Wednesday, June 19, 2019.
We took our RV out for the first time since moving to Missouri, up to RoadAmerica Racetrack in Wisconsin, to watch our son Christopher Schaafsma race his hopped up Volkswagen Golf in the H Production (HP) class. We enjoyed that experience even though he lost his transmission in the first race. He and his volunteer mechanics stayed up to 11 PM to install a rebuilt tranny, and was ready to race again. During his next race he was doing great, catching and passing several competitors, and we were really stoked to see him farther ahead of his pack each time he came into view on the lengthy track. It was thus a great disappointment to see him coasting slowly across an exit ramp about halfway through the race: One of his axles had failed.
We thus left that event a few hours earlier than planned, and headed for Charlotte Michigan to attend the annual Charlotte Bluegrass Festival and visit with Jacque's Uncle Bob and Aunt Marilyn Johnston as well as Jacque's brother Tom and his wife Carol.
We stopped for the night at the Cracker Barrel restaurant somewhere along the way. We arrived at Charlotte MI on Monday 26 June. Signed in and parked our rig next to Uncle Bob & Aunt Marilyn who were already settled in with their travel trailer.. Tuesday morning I ran out of insulin in my Medtronic pump and while inserting a new reservoir and infusion set, I realized I had only the ONE infusion set along with us: I had neglected to make sure I had some stashed in the RV. I worried, since I have been experiencing a 50-75% failure rate with infusion sets the last few months. I have to install a new reservoir and infusion set and then wait several hours before eating ANYTHING, so as to test my blood sugar and make sure the insulin is being pumped properly.
Sure enough, unfortunately, this set failed as well:
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I'm holding a black background to make this "cannula" more visible toward the bottom of this image
The tiny tubing is supposed to be straight and true, with no bends or kinks whatever.
As you can see, this has TWO major kinks in it that prevent insulin flow. |
These kinks occur thusly: The cannula, before insertion into the body fat, has a steel pin inside that extends beyond the cannula just a fraction. The whole pin assembly is normally just manually pushed into the belly fat through the skin, with rarely any sensation of pain or discomfort. The insertion pin is then pulled out, leaving the cannula NORMALLY still straight and unkinked in the belly fat just below the skin. Medtronic has evidently changed something in these assemblies, because before the last several months I had AMOST never had any failures with them. Since then, they fail at least half the time. And, of course, these things are EXPENSIVE. There's no excuse for it. I think they've changed the lubricant on the insertion pin, or the surface texture of the insertion pin, or SOMETHING. There's just no other way for such kinks to occur. They only happen when pulling the insertion pin OUT. I normally can feel the twinge of pain when it happens. Hopefully someone can make Medtronic FIX THIS.
My blood sugar had shot up and nothing happened when I bolused with the pump. More and more hours later and the blood glucoose (BG) was climbing in spite of all my efforts, including direct injections with my emergency needle. Various
calls to the VA and Medtronic showed I had no recourse: The fastest I could get any emergency replacements would be at least 2 days. Already feeling exceedingly wobbly and unbalanced, I could not afford to wait that long. Our fastest solution was to return home 600+ miles distant and pick up the needed supplies there. We didn't want to try taking the dogs and cat all together stuffed into the Ford Exploder we towed with the RV, and not wanting to completely abort our Bluegrass trip, Jacque took off by herself for a run to Missouri and back.
Wednesday morning I was feeling mighty poorly. Tuesday night Uncle Bob had taken me to the Charlotte emergency room, where we waited fruitlessly for hours while the nurses and doctor poked and prodded me without ever actually giving me an insulin shot. They were not overly concerned that my BG tested at 280- something. They were not endocrinologists, and said they were used to seeing diabetics come in with 600+ BG readings. I get excited when mine gets over 200, and it had hit 397 during one test in the RV just a few hours earlier. After enduring 2 or 3 more hours of sitting around in a hospital gown waiting for test results, the nice female doc gave me a prescription for a vial of regular insulin and they finally told us I had nothing to worry about and we could leave at our leisure. By then it was almost 11 PM, and no pharmacy was open at that hour, of course, so Uncle Bob and I returned to our RVs and hit the sack.
In the morning my BG was still above 240 or so. The pharmacy was only about 2 miles away so I convinced my very worried Unc Bob that I'd be better off riding my trike over to pick up the prescription and burn off some of my high blood sugar by the mild exercise of riding. The pharmacy at Meijers directed me to go to Walmart instead, which was another 5 miles away. I was starting to feel better after my short ride already so I willingly took off on the trike for Wally World. Uncle Bob does not use his cell phone, so I had no way of contacting him that I was going to be later than expected. He had worriedly assured me if I didn't come back in a reasonable time he would come looking for me.
I got to Walmart OK and paid for my insulin. As I walked to the door, I was stunned to see all sunshine had disappeared: Storm clouds had gathered and it was pouring rain outside.
I rushed out long enough to cover my trike electronics with plastic baggies, and came back inside Walmart to wait for the rain to stop. In a few minutes, it did, and I saddled up and hurriedly rode away. Every mile or so the rain would open up again, and I would take cover under a service station overhang, and once in the local VFW entry portal. It began to pour down so hard and relentlessly I decided I would just have to ride in the rain and get back as quickly as I could, knowing Uncle Bob & Auntie Marilyn would be looking for me in the wrong places. The streets were running water completely across the roadway by now and I was thrilled to note how well my plastical fenders worked with all the slop. The rain was just literally pouring down like Noah-build-an -Ark, and here I was caught in the middle of it all. The amazing thing is, the more I pedaled and the more completely I got absolutely SOAKED, I was feeling GREAT. Some of this was due obviously to my blood sugar burning off with the exercise, but the feeling of scooting around under my own power, even in this slop, was just absolutely amazing. When I got back to our RVs the water was 4-5 inches deep everywhere and still just pouring. I was able to park the trike under our RV awning to protect it a bit (already hopelessly soaked) and splash over to Unc Bob's trailer to tell him I was back and OK in all ways. Thankfully he and Aunt Marilyn had just gotten back themselves,, after fruitlessly looking for me everywhere they could, and not finding me. I was very sad to have upset them so with the worry.
It's now Friday, 3 days later past this misadventure, and I'm still feeling great. Jacque got back with my infusion sets, the very next on worked and works fine, and I am able to eat again. Hallelujah.
The rains finally stopped and the forecast for the next few days is sunshine and warmer and DRY weather, which is a welcome relief from all the soaking. But my foot pain is not as bad as it was before the rain-soaking trike ride.... Makes me wonder if I shouldn't try riding in the slop again.
Then again, maybe not.
I was not able to log any trip data from the GPS during this ride. My electronics got soaked in spite of my best efforts and I'm not sure how much repair or replacement will be needed for them to ever start working again.
Thankfully, though, at least I'M working again.
