Happy Pump Anniversary - NOT!

I was checking back in the archives on my regular journal, and I was just preparing to go on the pump this time last year. And this weekend, for the first time, I had a serious problem with insulin delivery. Here's what happened:

Friday morning I changed the site, since it was time. Insertion was fine but the site hurt, and bothered me all day. Friday mid-morning I checked my sugar, and it was a bit high. "No prob", I figured, maybe that apple I ate with breakfast was more carbs than I thought. The readings for the rest of the day were fine. This morning I woke up with a reading of 145. a bit high, but we had potatoes with dinner last night. I corrected and added in breakfast and figured I was good to go. But when I checked before lunch, it was 345!!! EEP! I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, and I had been out and about, not lazing on the couch with the paper. More insulin, some of it by injection this time, and lunch, and then I was due to go out to Starbuck's with a buddy at 3 PM, so I checked again in case I wasn't proof against the bakery case.

$&*&^%&**!!!!!!!!! 450!!!!!!!!!!!!! JEEZ!!

I freaked. This has never happened before. So I thought about what to do. Fortunately, last year I printed up a list of trouble-shooting stuff from the Medtronic handbook, and posted it on the back of the bathroom door in our kindergarten room at school, where I could see it and read it when I was sitting on the the throne and bored. (I'll read anything when I'm bored). And a lot of it had sunk in. So I checked the pump, no problem. Checked the tubing, fine. Checked the site, and bingo. The little disk-dealie was caked with blood in the center, and when I pulled it out to change the site, the tubing in it was filled with dried blood. So there it is. It wasn't letting the insulin through.

So I took some insulin right away by injection (I do that sometimes. Partly because I might be getting low but don't want to change the pump site yet, partly because it just seems..more proactive, or something). And refilled the pump and changed the site. And the last reading was fine, 133.

And I decided to post it because this is a place where peole will understand how I felt, and also to give those new to the pump a heads-up about this particular problem.