I’m not kidding when I say I think I’ve definitively identified the worst possible time to change a CGM sensor or pod – of course, I can only speak to a Dexcom CGM sensor and an Omnipod, so it’s probable that the worst time to do a site change may vary depending on the specific piece of equipment being used.
But I’ve learned from my own experiences that the worst time to do a site change is within a one-hour window of taking a shower.
Unless you want your pod to fall off and look sad like this one, maybe avoid changing it before taking a shower.
This is because I’ve found that the sensor or pod adhesive needs a solid block of time to firmly adhere to my skin. If I shower soon after completing a site change, I can almost guarantee that the heat and steam from the shower will be enough to dissolve the adhesive and cause the sensor or pod to fall off.
I’ve played around with the timing, too, and I’ve discovered that the more time I put in between a site change and shower, the better – an hour seems to be the absolute minimum. It can be a little inconvenient in the times that I have to forgo my CGM data for a longer period than I’d like, but my goodness, is it wonderful when the stars align and I can take a completely device-free shower. This doesn’t happen often as my sensor and pod change days don’t usually happen on the same day, but it’s undeniably a nice break when it does.
So, there you have it – a word of caution from me, a semi-pro CGM and pod wearer with about a decade’s worth of experience wearing both devices – the worst time to undergo a site change. A pod or CGM failure almost always can’t be helped, but I think it’s worth knowing how to prevent the likelihood of one or both of them needing to be replaced sooner than expected.
I don’t often perform pod changes in public. This is mainly due to the fact that I’m most comfortable changing my pod in my own home, where I have all my supplies readily available…and more importantly, it’s where I feel safe taking off a pod from an old site and putting a fresh one onto a new location.
So you can imagine the level of unease I felt when I had no choice but to change my pod at my office for the first time since starting my new job.
I did this plenty of times at my last office job, but that was always behind the privacy of a closed conference room door that I could lock and that nobody could see into. This level of discretion meant that I could take my time with my pod changes without worrying about someone seeing me and getting the wrong idea about what I was doing (even I can admit that it looks a bit suspicious to see someone in a non-hospital setting drawing an unidentified liquid out of a vial with a syringe).
Both fortunately and unfortunately for me, my new office space is so modern in its design that every single conference room is encased with glass walls and doors – making it all too easy to peer inside each one to determine whether or not it’s occupied. That’s great for off-the-cuff meetings, but not so much for someone who needs just 5 minutes to change an insulin pump site.
Due to the lack of privacy in my office suite, I had to venture out to the main building bathrooms as a next resort. But I wasn’t just going to use any old bathroom. No, I sought out the one that had what I suspected to be the least amount of foot traffic and also the cleanest sink, because I most certainly was not going to lock myself into a stall to ensure more privacy when changing my pod. Absolutely not. Sure, it would mean that I had the stall door blocking me from view, but it also meant I’d have to change my pod without a table in front of me to put my supplies on, and I wasn’t about to do that because it would virtually guarantee that I drop something on the unsanitary bathroom floor – or worst-case scenario, maybe even break my vial of insulin. I wasn’t about to risk that, so I set about changing my pod at the bathroom sink, keeping my fingers and toes crossed the entire time that nobody would walk in while I was at any stage of the process.
My mission was accomplished; a few moments later, I was rocking a brand-new pod and also marveling over how something fairly mundane (because I do it every 72 hours or so) could cause me such anxiety and make me feel self-conscious about needing to do this medically necessary routine in public. I’m not accustomed to feeling odd about my pod and the maintenance actions I take to keep it running smoothly – and to keep myself healthy, to boot – but there’s a solid, highly realistic chance that I’ll have to publicly change my pod again in the future. Hopefully, I can work on it so that changing my pod, whether within the walls of my own home or in the most public of locations, is something that I feel normal about doing, and worry less about whether or not people are judging me over it.
The latter half of July in New England has been hot, hot, hot this year. It’s almost pleasant compared to last year’s rainy summer months, but let’s emphasize “almost” in that sentiment.
Fortunately, something that makes the heat a bit more bearable is the fact that the condo complex that I live at has a pool! And what’s even better is that it’s pretty easy to find slots of time on the weekends to hang out by it and enjoy it undisturbed by other community members. Case in point? My boyfriend and I found an hour on a scorching Sunday evening to take a dip before grilling some chicken and veggies for dinner.
We had only just entered the pool up to our waists when a familiar screeching sound blared in our ears. Yup…my pod had just failed.
My community pool! Not pictured? My wailing pod!
Rather than get cranky about it, though, I just shrugged and figured it was no big deal, I had to change it in the next few hours, anyways. I was about to rip it off my abdomen when my boyfriend pointed out that the moment I submerged myself more fully in the water, then I wouldn’t hear the screaming pod anymore. Sure enough, he was right – I could only hear the shrill sound when I was underwater, making for an interesting soundtrack whenever I swam under the water’s surface.
We swam and chatted for about an hour before deciding that I probably shouldn’t procrastinate any longer when it came to putting on a new pod. So we dried off and headed inside, and discovered that my blood sugar had lingered in the low 100s the entire time. That was a welcome sight to see – my assumption is that I’d had enough insulin on board from earlier in the day that coupled with the exercise I got from swimming to prevent any sort of blood sugar bump.
So even though I literally swam right into a pod failure, it worked out in a funny way. It’s nice to know that pod failures don’t always have to be a total nuisance.
My Omnipod’s adhesive was damp from the shower. I was putting a pair of pants and not paying any mind to the pod I’d only been wearing for about 12 hours.
It’s no wonder that I brushed the fabric of my pants up against my pod in precisely the wrong way.
I heard the telltale sound of adhesive tearing off my skin and cursed before looking down to inspect the damage.
I expected to see a pod dangling on my leg by a thread, but instead I noticed that the adhesive around the cannula-end of the pod (the important end) still seemed totally stuck to my skin. It was the opposite end that was in trouble and definitely needed taping up if I hoped to save the pod.
So while I waited for my pod’s adhesive to completely dry from the shower so I could check it out further, I pondered: Do I run the risk of keeping this pod on, even though its security was significantly decreased? Or do I err on the side of caution and replace it, and enjoy the peace of mind that comes with a freshly applied pod?
Both options had pros and cons.
Spoiler alert: I decided to keep the pod on, but made sure it was as secure as it possibly could be by adding an overlay patch around it.
If I kept the pod on, my blood sugars might start to run high because I couldn’t say with 100% certainty that the cannula was still inserted in my skin. It looked like it could be, but the sound of half the adhesive ripping off made me suspicious. But if I replaced the pod, I would be wasting all the insulin I had just put into it the night before, which was a thought that was difficult for me to stomach.
I decided that the more favorable option to me was keeping the pod on, so once I knew it was dry, I added a little extra security by applying a PodPal (an Omnipod-shaped adhesive overlay meant to reinforce a pod’s stickiness) around it. As of this writing, only time will tell whether this was the right call to make, but my point in sharing this story is that this is an example of just one of the many judgment calls that people with diabetes have to make on pretty much a daily basis. This single decision took up mental energy and time that I would’ve rather used at work, or for chores around my house, or for just about anything else – but instead, diabetes had to be at the forefront of my thoughts and actions because it often demands just that much attention.
That’s why it’s kind of staggering to know that people with diabetes make around 180 decisions per day...with that in mind, there’s no doubting that diabetes is a condition defined by choices made. No matter how big or small – even as tiny as choosing whether or not to replace a pod – they all add up together to determine long-term health outcomes, and that in itself is a very big deal.
“Gimme a sec, I’m multitasking right now…owwwwwww!”
I was talking to my boyfriend on the phone and changing my Dexcom sensor at the same time when I was caught off-guard by (and yelped in surprise at) the sharp sting of the sensor’s needle plunging into my arm. It was a sting that evolved into a burn that lasted a solid 24 hours, much to my discomfort.
Examples of just a few of the many needles that I’m constantly poking myself with.
People often ask me whether or not my diabetes devices hurt. The answer is almost always no, because I’ve grown accustomed to the constant pricks and pokes. But once in a blue moon, I have a sensor or pod insertion that hurts so badly that my eyes well up with tears or I have to deal with a night or two of uneasy sleep, because it aches any time I roll over onto the stinging site.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve had at least 30,000 (yes, I did the math) shots and site changes over the years – diabetes still hurts, sometimes, and that’s just talking about the damage it does physically.
Diabetes hurts mentally, too, though that type of scarring is a whole lot more difficult to quantify.
The bottom line? Diabetes doesn’t hurt all of the time, but on the rare occasions it does, it’s a painful reminder that this is just the way of life for people like me who’ve got no other choice than to deal with it.
I knew I wanted to write a blog post about how I forgot to change my pod last week, and I knew I wanted to give it some sort of clever title…
…so out of site, out of mind is what I came up with. After all, my pump site was completely out of sight for me, which is one reason why I forgot it.
You’d think that it’d be impossible to forget about the device I have to wear 24/7, but it’s the sort of thing you get used to pretty quickly.
You’d think that after being on the Omnipod for almost 7 years, I’d never forget that I have to change my pod every 3 days. But just like I sometimes forget to reply to a text message or take a load of laundry out of the dryer, it slipped my mind the other night until just before I went to bed.
That’s when I was faced with a choice: Should I change the pod right then and there before I went to sleep, or let it expire overnight and change it first thing in the morning?
There were pros and cons to each. If I changed the pod before bed, then I wouldn’t have to worry about a screaming pod waking me up in the wee hours of the morning (well, I would if it failed, but the chances of that happening were small). But if I waited until the morning, I would ensure that the 30+ units of insulin still left in the pod would get used up as much as possible. It would also mean that I could push back my regular pod change by one whole day, which sounded appealing – until I remembered that it would mean that I’d have to change my pod on a Saturday when I’m double-hosting family, then friends, at my home.
So I sucked it up and changed my pod before going to sleep, knowing that in an hour and a half it would go off to remind me to check my blood sugar (to make sure that the pod was functioning properly), but feeling okay about this because I’d much rather deal with a gentle reminder over an aggressive malfunction alarm.
Now to the whole reason why I decided to share this seemingly insignificant anecdote in the first place: This is just one diabetes-related decision that I had to make on this particular day. I can’t even tell you how many other choices I had to make prior to this concerning which foods I ate, how much insulin I took, when I exercised, when I ate my meals, and so forth.
Diabetes is a disease defined by decisions. Fortunately, this one about when to change my pod was an easier one to make…but unfortunately, there are many others that are much more difficult. And I think all people with diabetes deserve goddamn decision-making trophies because of the funny conundrum of having no choice but to live life by making decisions.
This post was originally published on Hugging the Cactus on June 3, 2020. I’m sharing it again today because I have seriously benefited from learning the “true” length of time that a single OmniPod lasts on my body. Read on to learn more…
When people notice my OmniPod insulin pump, the first question that I’m asked is “what IS that?”
After I explain that it’s my insulin pump, and it’s called a pod, the second question I’m asked is some variation of “how long does it last?”
The canned answer that I provide is something about having to change it every three days, because that’s how the OmniPod is advertised.
But I’ve used this pump for years now and never bothered to really test this three-day limit. I’ve known for a long time that my pod works a handful of hours after the expiration alarm starts chiming, but I wasn’t sure about exactly how many hours I had before a pod expired for good.
So, the other day, I decided to find out.
Have you ever made your pod last longer than 80 hours? If so…are you a wizard???
My pod expired at 10:22 A.M. Since I prefer to change my pods in the evening, I figured it was the perfect time for this little experiment, assuming that the pod really would last me for the majority of the day.
And, well, it did! At 10:22 on the dot, the pod beeped at me to notify me that it was expired. And in the six hours after that, it would alarm every hour (on the 22nd minute) to remind me, time and time again, that it was expired. In the seventh hour – beginning at 5:22 P.M. – my PDM started chirping at me on and off every 15 minutes or so. First it was because I was running out of insulin, but then it was to really get the point across that my pod was expired!
I was determined to use every last drop of insulin in the pod, though, so I bolused for my dinner around 5:45 and I was pleased to discover that I got my full dose of insulin without any issues. As I was cleaning up after dinner, that’s when the signature OmniPod BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP went off as one blaring, unceasing alarm. I checked the time: 6:22 P.M.
So there was my answer. An OmniPod can last precisely 80 hours after you initially activate it for the first time (or in other words, 8 hours after you receive the first expiration message)…as long as it still has insulin in it. It’s definitely something good to know for sure now, because in the future, it might come in handy and help me avoid wasting precious insulin.
A “yay”: Summer is here!!! Hooray for warm weather, beach trips, and backyard BBQs! (Not to mention VACCINES!)
A “nay”: My pods and my CGM sensors are about to bare themselves for the world to see and we are NOT READY for it.
My confidence in my appearance is rarely, if ever, high. But I like to fake it ’til I make it and act like I’m rocking my summer wardrobe instead of stressing about how my legs or arms look in the staples of the season that are designed to show more skin.
Usually, I have a lot more success in feeling good about how my medical devices appear on my body. Whether they’re hidden under my clothes or out for the world to see, I typically don’t care because these gadgets are keeping me alive!!! And that’s a lot more important than any negative body image connotations they may create.
A picture from a time during which I was very okay with PDA (public displays of my arms).
But something about this year feels different to me. I am so not looking forward to the extra stares that my diabetes technology attracts. I’m not sure if it has to do with being sheltered in the last year and a half because of the pandemic, but whatever the cause may be, this is something I’m grappling with as the temps creep up and the temptation to hit the beach grows stronger.
I know I’m not the only one dealing with this. In fact, I was in Maine for a couple of days with my parents and I was wearing my pod on my leg, whereas my mom had hers on her arm. And we had multiple people approach us about our pods! They weren’t necessarily rude in their approaches – curiosity drove them to speak with us and that’s innocent enough – but it’s still weird to know that people are looking closely enough at our bodies to see our devices and feel comfortable enough to ask us about them. Plus, I felt extra self-conscious about it because in typical Molly fashion, I had a sunburn all around my pod thigh site…when applying sunscreen, I almost always miss the area directly around my pods because I’m afraid of the sunscreen making my adhesive weaker or interfering with the pod’s functionality. So not only did I have this big chunk of plastic sitting on my leg, it was also red all around the site, drawing even more attention to it. It was a relief when I was able to put shorts on over my swimsuit and cover up both the burn and the pod.
So while I’m not loving how wary I’ve felt lately about baring my diabetes devices, I’m also coming to terms that it’s just a sort of phase that I’m going through right now. And that’s okay. I’m also trying to remind myself that I don’t have to feel obligated to go into detailed explanations when people ask me about my pod or CGM. It’s a natural tendency that I have to use it as a teaching moment and be a good diabetes advocate, but sometimes I just don’t have the energy for it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that as the summer season goes on, my comfortability with my diabetes devices increases and I worry less about the looks they tend to draw.
This blog post was originally published on Hugging the Cactus on May 13, 2020. I’m sharing it again today because I think it’s super important to weigh the answers to these questions before deciding to try new diabetes technology. This is coming from someone who waited 17 years before she tried her first insulin pump, and even though it has had an enormously positive influence on my life and sometimes I wish I’d tried it sooner, I’m ultimately glad that I waited that long! Read on for more details…
So you want to try your first continuous glucose monitor. Or maybe you’re ready to leave behind multiple daily injections and switch to insulin pump therapy. Whichever diabetes device you’re looking to start using, there are some questions you’ll probably want to have answers to before decide that now’s the time to introduce new diabetes technology into your daily routine.
The following is a compilation of the questions that I thought long and hard about (literally for years) and that I wish I’d thought long and hard about before I made the transition to the OmniPod insulin pump.
1.Am I ready for it? It took me 17 years before I decided that I was ready to try an insulin pump. 17 freakin’ years!!! I spent most of that time being too afraid of introducing such a drastic change to a routine I’d had down pat for such a long period of my life. There are times when I wish I’d gone onto my insulin pump sooner, but ultimately, I’m glad that I wasn’t swayed by my family or doctors to go on it before I truly felt ready. By the time I started using my OmniPod, I had the maturity, responsibility, and emotional intelligence that I felt that I needed for an insulin pump.
2. Will I be able to afford it? Obviously, this isn’t a question that I wondered about when I was younger, but it’s one of the first things that comes to mind as an adult on her own health care plan. We all know that diabetes supplies are expensive, and it seems that the more technologically advanced something is, the more money that has to be forked over in order to obtain it. This isn’t right or fair, but it’s a simple truth and an important one to think about before choosing one pump or continuous glucose monitor over another.
3.Why do I want to start using it? I wanted to start using my OmniPod because my mom experienced great success when she started using it. And I decided to get a Dexcom CGM because I fell in love with the technology after undergoing a trial period with my endocrinologist. In both situations, I felt very much in control of my decision to start using these devices and I didn’t really listen to anyone else’s opinions. But I am very aware of the fact that social media and real-life friendships with other people with diabetes can often sway people in different directions. After all, if I saw a post on Instagram from a dia-influencer who was singing the praises of a Tandem T:slim pump, then I might seriously start thinking about switching to it (this has actually happened to me). But the bottom line is to think about the why – will this device enhance quality of life for me? Will diabetes be easier to manage with it? Will it help me achieve my A1c and/or blood sugar goals? Do I need to add something new to my routine because I’m feeling burnt out by doing things the same way all the time? Knowing why I wanted to use an OmniPod or a Dexcom CGM made me feel that much better during the whole process of learning how to use them – I felt like I had clear goals that would help me navigate the integration of these new technologies into my daily routine.
Did you know that Insulet/OmniPod has demo pods that you can wear? They don’t hold insulin or deploy a cannula, but they can give you a good sense of what it’s like to wear a pod on a daily basis!
4. Will I be comfortable wearing it 24/7? This is a big one! Pods, pumps, and CGMs are very visible, and it can be jarring to go from being “naked” to having bumps and lumps underneath clothes that can get caught on doorknobs, chairs, and the like. Personally, the benefits of my OmniPod and Dexcom outweigh something like this which is a bit superficial, but that doesn’t mean it’s not something to think about. But it’s also worth thinking about comfort and what is least painful when it comes to insulin delivery, so that’s why this is an important question to ask.
5.Do I know anyone else using it who can provide feedback from a patient’s perspective? I’ve talked about this before, but I’m not sure when, if ever, I would have seriously considered using the OmniPod if my mother hadn’t tried it first. The fact that we both have diabetes has probably made us a little closer and strengthened our bond, so if there’s anyone’s opinion that I’m going to trust when it comes to something like this, then it’s hers. I can actually remember her first few weeks on the OmniPod – in which she learned a lot of valuable lessons – and how pleased she was with it once a few months with it elapsed. She taught me the ins and outs of the OmniPod when I started to use it, and I’d argue that her advice was more helpful than that of my diabetes educator. So I’d advocate gathering opinions from family and friends (if either is applicable) or the diabetes online community before going on a new diabetes device, in addition to the research component below…
6.Have I done enough research on it? …Like any smart shopper, it’s crucial to really consider all options and research them thoroughly, especially when it comes to the top contender. I definitely did not complete sufficient research before going onto the OmniPod or Dexcom; rather, I trusted that they were just right for me. If I were to switch to something else tomorrow, though, you can bet that’d I’d spend a lot of time scouring the web for every last bit of information on the device so I could make the most informed decision possible.
New diabetes technology can be both scary and exciting. But more than anything else, it can really make life with diabetes much more carefree, and I’m glad that in this day and age there are so many options available to people with diabetes that continue to be technologically impressive
WARNING: If you are at all squeamish when it comes to blood…then this blog post is NOT for you! I will not be posting any graphic photos or anything, but I’ll be telling a bloody tale that might make the faint of stomach a bit queasy. Read on if you have no fear…
There’s nothing quite like waking up and doing a routine pod change…only to have blood literally pour out of your body the moment you tear your old pod from its site.
Okay, so using the word “bloodbath” in the title might be a gross exaggeration (LOL at my pun because yep it was GROSS), but I digress…blood really did stream in a rivulet down my arm. It sounds wild, but it’s true!
This happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I don’t often change my pod first thing in the morning, but every now and then, I’ll time it so that my pod is set to expire (like, really expire – pods expire for good 8 hours after receiving the initial “pod expired” message on the PDM) as soon as my wake-up alarm goes off. My only goal in prolonging the pod like that is to use up as much insulin as possible that’s left in the reservoir…naturally, I don’t like the idea of tossing a pod when it’s still got 50+ units of insulin left in it.
So I literally woke up on this particular morning at 6 A.M. to my pod screaming because I’d hit the 8-hour mark. I rolled out of bed and stumbled over to my mirror so I could have a better view of the pod, which was sitting on the back of my arm, and proceeded to rip the pod off. That’s when I saw blood – not just a tiny drop, but a full-on stream running down my arm!
The ‘betes can get bloody from time to time.
I was surprised, but still had my wits about me to the extent that I was able to run into my bathroom and grab some tissues so I could start wiping up the blood and apply pressure at the site. I barely made it in time – the blood was coming out so fast that drops were falling on the floor and my sink was getting dotted with red. I wasn’t really freaked out, per se, because I knew that if I just pressed hard enough with a tissue, then I’d be able to staunch the wound. And sure enough, within 5 minutes or so, I’d successfully done just that. I peeked under the last tissue I’d used and noticed a purplish mark at the old pod’s site, which indicated to me that I must’ve hit some sort of vein when I had put that pod on. Definitely not intentional, but something I hope to avoid going forward.
And undoubtedly…definitely not my favorite way to start the day!
Hugging the Cactus 