Living Well With Diabetes

I’m in Othello, Washington tonight and last night I was in a small town named Quincy.

My ride yesterday started off in the foothills of the Cascades. At the city of Wenatchee, I stopped at a pharmacy for a new supply of insulin and test strips. Then I crossed the Columbia River and left the Cascades behind me. I followed the Columbia for quite a while, with large cliffs on each side of me. As I approached Quincy, I began a long, hot climb out of the valley and onto a plateau, a plateau where major agricultural activity takes place. Yesterday and today, I passed mile after mile of fields of corn, wheat, apples, walnuts, and who knows what else. Many of the fields had signs on the fenceline indicating what the field contains otherwise I almost certainly would have little idea what the fields contained.

I’ve been having more troubles with my insulin pump. The PDM (the handheld unit I use to program and get information from the pump) has a black and white LCD display. In Leavenworth, I noticed four entire rows of pixels had gone blank. They didn’t interfere with the operation of it, but I was afraid it might get worse.

Last night, it wasn’t the PDM giving me troubles. I had two insulin pods fail. The first was an occlusion and that forced me to switch to a new pod. The new pod failed too though: I couldn’t get it to respond to any commands. Luckily, the next pod was fine, but now I’m running short of pods. I have enough to get home, but I have no spares.

This morning, I noticed that now seven entire rows of pixels were blank. I decided it was time to call the support line. I told them about the pod failures at the same time. After some discussion, they’re sending two new pods and a new PDM to me. I had to make a reservation at a motel in Kennewick, Washington tomorrow night so they had a place to send them.

I don’t have any photos for today because for some unknown reason, I can’t upload photos. If I get it figured out, I’ll add them later.

Last night, I was woken up by an alarm from my OmniPod: another occlusion. I got up and set about attaching a new pod. This one was dead, however. It didn’t respond to any of the commands from the handheld management unit. So, I cracked open yet another pod. Luckily, that one worked OK.

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