Today, I'm talking about a new issue I've encountered with my infusion set for the insulin pump. I should have learned my lesson the first time, but I repeated my mistake. I thought I would share my experience to possible help others in the future.
I use the Paradigm Insulin Pump from Medtronic and the Silhouette infusion set. A couple days ago, when I put on my new infusion set, I noticed a little blood in the catheter. No problem, I needed a morning Bolus and the blood went away instantly. However, because of a past experience, I believe I should have changed the set right away. The site began to look progressively worse over a couple days time and I took it out this morning.
I was very surprised by what happened next (warning for those that are squeamish about the description of blood). From the site, blood began coming out at a pretty good flowrate. Bright red and quickly streaming down my side. I scrambled for a napkin to sop up the mess and as quickly as I could I covered the site and applied pressure for several minutes.
This is the second time this has happened within a year's time. In very basic terms, it really freaked me out. A stream of blood coming from a puncture on your stomach would do that I guess. Now I'm left with a very sore and bruised area about 1/2 inch in diameter. I cleaned the area thoroughly and bandaged it as I would bandage any other basic wound.
Blood in the catheter should have been a strong warming that the site was not good for me. I had crazy high blood sugar readings for nearly 3 days and I was also very high this morning. Aside from using excessive amounts of insulin, the experience was frustrating and then frightening. I don't like having to change an infusion set right away because its painful and wastes supplies, but in the long run, I felt much worse when I kept it on and I wasted insulin, time, and health. It just isn't worth it to save an infusion set
