Even a tubeless insulin pump isn’t immune to unexpected detachment.

I’ve fallen victim to this phenomenon a handful of times over the years, and it struck me yet again earlier this month.

I’d been complaining to my partner that my pod was beginning to itch; specifically, right around the cannula. I’d also noticed that the adhesive was sticking up around most of the edge and assumed that perhaps the lack of full contact was creating the itching sensation. Writing that just now, let alone thinking it, doesn’t make much sense. But I was looking for some sort of explanation as to why my skin was itching underneath my pod, and this was the one I settled for. I decided to apply a Pod Pal (the Omnipod-provided medical tape that fits perfectly around a pod) and just deal with any lingering itchiness for the remaining 12-ish hours that my pod would be on.

Surprisingly, the itchiness faded only an hour or two after I initially noticed it, which was great! What was less-than-ideal, though, was that the itchiness likely went away because something – maybe a certain way I had moved my body, or it could’ve been me jostling my pod somehow in just the wrong manner and not noticing it – caused my cannula to pop out…meaning that the insulin I had given myself for dinner likely didn’t deliver. Well, that explained the strong insulin odor my nostrils had detected as well as my skyrocketing blood sugar levels, per my CGM.

Luckily, it was pretty easy for me to handle this unforeseen circumstance. However, it was annoying to have to change the pod earlier than I wanted to, and I didn’t love that my blood sugar crept into the 300s for a few hours that evening due to the lack of insulin. This disconnection rattled me, and in the days following it I realized that I’m feeling a diabetes disconnection on more than just the device front.

It’s also striking me on the community front.

I’ve felt more disconnected from the diabetes community in the last 6 months than I have in potentially my entire adult life. I know that part of this is due to the fact that I no longer work in diabetes, but I think it’s also because I’ve struggled to relate to a lot of what’s out there, at least what’s shared online, anyways. I feel like I can’t quite relate to the desire to express my life with diabetes 24/7, and yet I also very much don’t want to shelter this part of my life and miss talking to others about the ins and outs of it. It’s a weird gray area that I’m in, and it’s a little disconcerting to feel this disconnected from a community I may not have always embraced, but one that I’ve grown to appreciate, respect, and learn so much from.

So what do I do about this feeling? It’s not as simple as taking off the old pod and putting a new one on…or is it? Do I a) dare to step out of my comfort zone a little bit and explore opportunities to reconnect with the diabetes community (whether in-person or virtually), or do I b) ride it out and spend some time reflecting on whether my needs, as a person who has lived with diabetes for more than 25 years, have changed? Option A feels overwhelming as I really don’t know where to start, and option B feels pretty scary as I don’t know whether giving up peer support is something that I should really pursue at this particular juncture in my diabetes journey since it’s helped me in indescribable ways in the last decade.

I suppose that time will tell what is right for me, and I accept knowing that my needs may or may not change over time – and whether they do or don’t is perfectly reasonable. I take a lot of comfort in knowing that.