Dying OmniPod PDM
I always love getting woken up by a loud annoying beep in the middle of the night. It is even better when it is the device that sends commands to the insulin pump currently attached to your body. And... it gets even better when it decides that it has had a massive error and gives you the option to reset it or continue listening to the annoying beep. So, I reset it. Which then becomes even cooler, because it makes me remove the Insulin pod I was wearing for some reason unknown to me but known to the device. So I pull off the insulin pod, reset it and go to back to sleep.
When I wake up, I found out the PDM (Personal Diabetes Manager) has decided to die again -- for about the tenth time in the past few days.. while on fresh batteries. This necessitates a call into Insulet's (the makers of the OmniPod) tech support. After a few simple questions they decide to overnight a new PDM along with a return label for the one I have that doesn't want to work. Which is completely awesome. However, (no fault of Insulet's) I'm stuck using insulin pens for today and maybe some of tomorrow. I'm really not a fan of sticking myself 4+ times a day in the gut. Just really doesn't seem like the best insulin delivery system.
Back to the Insanity!
As you may have noticed I haven't updated about the Insanity workout for the past few weeks. It wasn't because I gave up on it. It is for some other reasons that I had to take a break. First, I came off of my second type I diabetic honeymoon (meaning the insulin production of my islet cells has reduced to the point where I need the insulin pump again) and secondly, I pulled a calf muscle while doing one of the exercises in the rest week workout.
I've managed to get my blood glucose levels back under tight control for breakfast to bedtime, however I need to work on the night time routine now. The night time routine shouldn't be that hard however, I'll just need to wake up around 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am, and 5am across the week (like one blood glucose test a night.. not all in one night) and figure out the pattern and adjust my insulin pump to prevent having a morning blood glucose high.
Two weeks of rest did a good job healing my calf muscle, however, it does lead me to question why Insanity lacks any sort of calf muscle stretch in their stretching routine. I guess I'll have to give a quick calf stretch near the end of the stretching so I won't be having those problems anymore.
I look forward to finishing off Insanity across the next four weeks and then start up on P90X. Then I'll start attacking a P90X / Insanity hybrid where I'll insert Insanity's plyometrics and cardio workout routines in place of P90X's versions.
As a side note, I did attempt the first workout routine of Insanity's second month and that is when I realized I was off the type 1 honeymoon... I did manage to burn over 1000 calories and maintain a high heart rate throughout the workout. It is definitely a whole different level of intensity compared to the first month -- and I love it.
A dead OmniPod!? and some pictures of Mount Bonnell at night
This morning was the wonderful pod replacement morning and I ran into a little snag. As the pod was priming itself, it decided to die. When the pod suffers a defect like this it gives off one of the loudest, most annoying tones I have ever heard. With the pod dying, I had to use another pod and hope that it worked (which it did). But, what to do about this dead pod? Toss it? No way, I was told by my Endocrinologists to just give a call to Insulet Corp (the makers of the OmniPod) anytime something happened and they make it right. I called them and after getting some basic information from me they are sending me an additional OmniPod with my next refill of pods.. gotta love it when a company does right.
And, now for something completely different. I went up to Mount Bonnell on Tuesday night and took some photographs. I should have brought some other lenses than just my 10-22mm and 15-75mm so I could get some better shots of the downtown skyline but this gives me a reason to go back. Another item I should have brought was a tripod, but that would have been strange, instead I got creative and rested the camera on various items around Mount Bonnell.
OmniPod Recycle Program
Ever since I got the OmniPod I felt pretty bad throwing away each pod since it had a large amount of plastic, batteries and other electrical bits inside of it. When I went to my Endocronolgist appointment last Friday they mentioned that the makes of the OmniPod had a recycling program, all it cost the user was the $8 dollars to ship the pack back to them once you filled it up. I'm going to have to give them a call very soon and have them send me out the pack, if you want to read about it, you can see their site here.
Not the way I expected to be woken up this morning… Part II
After chronicling the wonderful experience I had a few days ago, it happened again on Sunday. So, I went through the whole routine of ripping off the old pod and putting on a new one. This time however, I decided to figure out why it happened. Once could be a fluke, but twice, less than a week a part? Something wasn't set right. So I started digging through the menus on the PDM that controls the pod and found a setting conviently labeled 'Automatic Pod Shut Off,' and as you can guess, its option was a number of hours. I had it set to 12 hours, meaning if the pod hadn't gotten a signal from the PDM in 12 hours it would automatically shut off. So I went ahead and changed that setting to 17 hours and made sure to bring the PDM upstairs with me when I went to bed and remembered to take downstairs when I ate breakfast, which I left on the table as I left the house this morning to go to work.
As the old folks say, "C'est la vie, it just shows you never can tell."
Not the way I expected to be woken up this morning…
This morning, I woke up to an annoying loud beep coming from my abdomen, more specifically, the OmniPod device attached to it. It was a wonderfully annoying beep obviously meant to wake you up and warn you something went wrong. What went wrong, well, you'd have to figure that out for yourself. Anyway, after stumbling out of bed still not completely awake, but realizing something was going on with the OmniPod, I made my way downstairs to the PDM part of the device. As I was going down the stairs I could hear the PDM giving off the same annoying loud beep, so I was being annoyed in stereo. I made it to the PDM and pressed the home button to light up the screen and see what error it was giving me. It only said that the pod was no longer active and I needed to remove it.
When it was all said and done, I pulled off the one that shut down and got a new one put on and managed to make it into work on time. However, I'm still curious as to why the pod decided to expire on me early and shut off. And even stranger is how the PDM was able to know that the pod was shut off and making that same annoying beeping noise when it wasn't even in range of the pod itself. I guess it is time for me to pull out the manual and see what I can find out..