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.
Random Type 1 Diabetes News
I was going through my back log of Diabetes Forecast magazines and stumbled upon some interesting articles and facts and I've collected them here in a nice bullet point list.
- Scientists are now able to take skin cells from Type 1 patients, convert them to stem cells, then convert them into insulin producing cells. These cells are believed to be very similar to the pancreatic beta cells.
- Young children with high blood glucose levels have a much greater risk for tuberculosis, so having blood glucose levels under control can help reduce the susceptibility of children to TB.
- People with Type 1 diabetes are at an increased risk for celiac disease, however, in a recent study it was found that half the people with diabetes had an abnormal immune response to wheat proteins but not due to the gene associated with celiac disease but with a Type I gene instead.
- Chocolate can promote heart health as long as you eat some at least twice a week (God, I love the Journal of Internal Medicine)
- Resveratrol (a chemical in Red Wine) has been found to reduce blood glucose levels and it's anti-diabetic active comes straight from the brain. Now I have an even better excuse for drinking red wine with every meal... it's a medical condition.
- Alzheimer's progresses more slowly in diabetics than non-diabetics.
- Veggies are good for you (no, really, they did a study and it is true)
And there you go, a whole bunch of random facts about what is going on in the world of Diabetes research.
Reversing Type 1 Diabetes
The Faustman Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital has been working on a vaccine for Type 1 Diabetes using a generic drug Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG). The experiments have passed every research milestone ahead of schedule and and the Phase I safety trial in humans is almost complete. In Phase II they will study the dosage and frequency of the administration to reverse Type 1 Diabetes. The kicker in all of this is that BCG is a generic drug that has been in use for over 80 years as a vaccine. BCG has the ability to attack and destroy auto-immune disorder causing T-cells while causing the release of new healthy T-cells at the same time. BCG also does not attack the healthy T-cells so the autoimmune system is left in-tact. With the immune system working properly it allows the pancreas to regenerate the islet cells and start producing insulin again. I hope the second phase of the testing works as well as the first, as much as I like the idea of being a cyborg, I like the idea of not having to worry about pricking my fingers, replacing pods, insulin and batteries and being healthy a whole lot more.
A much more in-depth article about the research can be read here and more information about the Faustman Lab is 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..