When I noticed the alarm, I had just finished a bolus for breakfast. I took off the rear cover of the PDM, removed the batteries, and then put in two new AAA batteries from my supply. Normally when I do this, the PDM displays a splash screen while it starts up again. Within fifteen seconds or so, it’s back to business as usual.

This morning, however, the new batteries did nothing. I immediately suspected the batteries were inserted backwards. I checked the plus and minus ends and re-inserted. Still nothing. I wondered if I picked a pair of dead batteries from my supply, so I picked another two batteries and inserted. Within a few seconds I saw the splash screen and I thought I was back in business. Nope. Next thing I saw was an error message “PDM Error” or something like that. I clicked on the “OK” button (nothing else I could do at that point). Then it prompted me for the current date and time. It had lost it’s settings! Having to re-enter date and time is barely an inconvenience though. On the other hand, re-entering all my alarms, basal rates, carbohydrate to insulin ratios, custom temporary basal rates, custom food definitions, personal information, etc., etc., etc., now that’s a real pain.

But then something even worse happened. Due to the loss of date and time, it had decided that it could no longer communicate with the pod I was using. I still had two days of use on that pod too!

It wasn’t done yet though. After I had changed to a new pod, there was a message that it could not do bolus calculations for another two hours. Normally, I enter the amount of carbohydrate I’m going to eat and it tells me how much insulin to deliver based on my carbohydrate to insulin ratio and the amount of insulin on board (the amount of insulin previously delivered that’s still available in my body). This time, however, with the date and time change and the switch to the new pod, it didn’t know for sure how much insulin it had delivered, only that it had delivered some. I don’t know, maybe it’s really harder than I think to keep track of these three or four pieces of information, especially when you have a disposable pod involved. But, let me say this: none of my previous insulin pumps ever painted itself into a corner in such a way that a simple change of the batteries created this cascade of inconveniences.

It was all very annoying. But, in retrospect, not annoying enough to get me to switch to another insulin pump (boy, talk about an inconvenience!). The OmniPod has a some great features and conveniences. My hope is that by writing about this experience here, someone else using an OmniPod will read this and at least be aware that this situation can arise. Oh yes, it would also be nice if someone from Insulet Corporation (the makers of the OmniPod) were to see this and be sure their next product doesn’t have this “feature.”

More about sailing

What does this say about diabetes? You’d think that if diabetes is on the rise worldwide (and I think there’s general agreement that it is) that Google would have an increase in the number of searches for that term.

Well, if you take a look at Google Trends for some other general health-related search terms, they show similar trends. For example,

• cancer
• obesity
• heart disease
• asthma

All of these show a similar long-term downward trend. Even non-health-related search terms show a downward trend:

• bicycling
• running
• automobile

Interestingly, automobile is dropping dramatically and running is very close but not quite level.

My theory about these downward trends, and about the diabetes search term in particular, is that it says very little about the popularity of the activity or object or the incidence of the disease. Instead, it’s all about the evolving nature of life online. People are getting more sophisticated in their online activities. They’re less likely to find satisfaction in searching for a generic term like “diabetes” or “cancer” or “running.” I mean, it isn’t helpful when Google returns over 65 million results when you search for “diabetes.” Plus, five years ago we didn’t have the concept of social networking sites like Flickr, Twitter, facebook, myspace, etc. so people are finding places other than Google to go to for information. That’s my theory. Anybody have other ideas? I’d love to hear them.

As much as I’d like to go into more details about my experiences learning to sail again after having not set foot on a sailboat for about thirty years, it feels a bit off-topic on this web site, Living Well With Diabetes. So, I’ve decided to start a new blog just for the topic of sailing. Since about the time I started work on building my Eastport Pram (last August) I’ve been debating with myself about whether I should do this. After all, I can barely keep one web site filled with regular posts.

In the end, I felt it was something I wanted to do separate from this site. I will continue Living Well With Diabetes, but any sailing talk on this web site will point you to my sailing web site.

You’re probably wondering what the new web site is called. Well, sailing is nothing if not a vast ocean of terminology, some of it obscure, some of it colorful, but all of it meaningful. Apparently everything aboard has to have a special name so sailors can communicate clearly and concisely to other sailors. It also helps them identify non-sailors due to their puzzled looks when a sailor spews a mouthful of sailor-speak.

As I’ve been reading about sailing, one of my favorite sailing terms I’ve encountered (so far) is baggywrinkle. A baggywrinkle is a soft covering around a rope or cable to prevent it from chafing on a sail.

It’s a funny-sounding name, but it’s meaningful to me. This new site will be about learning to sail and I really, really hope I can do it without much, if any, chafing.

So, there you have it. That’s how thebaggywrinkle.com came into existence. Go to http://www.thebaggywrinkle.com/ and check it out. There’s a mailing list you can sign up for and a form for sending me an email. I’d love to know what you think about it.

I haven’t written much about the building of this Eastport Pram or the topic of sailing at all because it seems a bit off-topic for this web site. But, I think can say this safely: early last week, Pat and I enrolled in a “Cruise and Learn” course. It’s a five-day course leaving from Sidney, British Columbia (south end of Vancouver Island). It starts on May 30. In the meantime, we have “on shore” course work to do. By the time we arrive back in Sidney, we will have earned a Canadian Yachting Association Day Skipper certificate (providing we pass the written exams).