Insulin pump sites have been a hot topic for me lately.

Not only did I share that I’m in the process of experimenting with some new (intimidating) sites, but I’m also contemplating the efficacy of all of my current sites.

My site lineup (as of this writing) includes the abdomen, upper arms, lower back, and thighs. And I’ve noticed an unusual pattern emerging with one of these sites that I know for a fact isn’t happening just to me – it’s happened to my mom, too…

…and that pattern is a series of failures with sites on the upper arms.

I can’t offer any explanation for it other than it’s definitely been a “thing” for my mom and I these last few weeks. It started happening to her first. I think she had 3 or 4 pod failures throughout August, and it only happened to pods that she was wearing on her upper arms. At first, I was skeptical of this and assumed it was maybe a bad batch or a total coincidence.

But then it happened to me, twice in a row.

On both occasions, I’d been sitting there, minding my own business (well, the first time, I was a passenger in a car and the second time, I was leading a virtual meeting with a couple dozen people on the call…the latter was far more disruptive).

My pods hadn’t been delivering a bolus.

I didn’t bump up or come into contact with the pods in any manner whatsoever.

My pods weren’t due to expire for another 12ish and 48ish hours, respectively.

There was no blood at the pod sites.

The cannulas on both pods weren’t kinked.

Static electricity wasn’t a factor.

But what these pods did have in common was that they were on my upper arms – one on the right, one on the left.

It’s straight-up bizarre, and when I called Insulet/OmniPod to report the second instance, I made sure they noted in their records that this phenomenon has occurred not just for me, but also for my mom. The representative didn’t say whether other people have been calling in with this issue, but it’s definitely weird that it’s happened more than once to both my mom and to me.

So while I can’t say for certain – at this time, anyways – whether particular sites result in more pod failures than others, I can say that I won’t be wearing a pod on my upper arm any time soon…and I’m going to be on the lookout for similar stories from other OmniPod users in the DOC. After all, our ingenious community can be even better than the pump manufacturers themselves when it comes to troubleshooting, so I’m hopeful that I can get to the bottom of this before long. I like my upper arm as a site because my insulin absorption is great there, but I’m not willing to use it again until I know I won’t experience another pod failure in the foreseeable future.