BeingDiabetic.co.nz » Insulin

New technology – insulin delivery patch.

Nic — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:44:29 +0000

I got a Diabetes Health newsletter in my inbox this week and the headline “Easy to use insulin delivery patch” caught my eye. I clicked through to watch this video and was super impressed with what I saw! Basically a company in the States (Prodigy Diabetes Care) has created a ‘patch’ which can hold up to 200 units of insulin at a time which sits on your skin, and which you can manually operate to release a unit of insulin at a time. It wasn’t super clear exactly how this works but they mentioned a cannula which makes me think it must be a tube which goes into your subcutaneous to deliver the insulin. The…

Interesting what people remember.

Nic — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:28:16 +0000

I went out to dinner with my two best girlfriends last night, to a local Italian BYO. It had been about 12 years since I was last at this particular restaurant. At the end of the meal, I remarked how well they were doing to still be around, and how I always remembered this restaurant fondly.

One of my friends lives in the area, as do her family. It used to be a frequently-visited restaurant for she and the extended family. I asked her if they still go there regularly, and her response was interesting:

“We have recently started coming back here, but we stopped for ages after they were so rude to you about your diabetes”, she said. I…

We are beholden.

Nic — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 21:10:39 +0000

Like it or not, as insulin addicts, we are in a bit of a tight spot when it comes to the world markets. As those of us on Cozmo insulin pumps found out last year, market forces can have a profound effect on the availability of products we rely on to keep our diabetes under control.

The most recent example of this has sprung up in the last week, with insulin manufacturing giant Novo Nordisk deciding they won’t cut their prices for the Greek market, resulting in them stopping supply of “modern insulins”. I’ve had a bit of a search and…

Joyeux anniversaire.

Nic — Sat, 22 May 2010 22:45:28 +0000

Happy anniversary to meeeee. Today, I have had type 1 diabetes for 16 years. Exactly half of my life. Woahhhh.

I feel simultaneously old, and fortunate today. I remember when I was 16, thinking I was pretty onto it and sort of grown up, and now I’m DOUBLE that age – crikey! The fortunate bit – I don’t have a single diabetes complication to date (despite doing my best to ignore my diabetes for many years in my late teens and twenties), and I am now fortunate to have a regime which (on the whole) works really well for me and is limited in its invasiveness in my life. I’ve been through many regimes – clear + cloudy from a…

Guest Blog: Thank YOU Mr Banting

Aaron — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:53:16 +0000

While I was at work last week lamenting the fact that I had to work instead of still being at the camp with the kids and the sunshine and fun, I got to thinking about how lucky diabetics are these days. I know that this will age me chronically but it’s the truth so I’m gonna say it anyway.

Back in the day (1991 to be exact) we sure as heck didn’t have pumps. Hell, we didn’t even have insulin pens so I was a little shocked I suppose when I saw these young ones all doing what I thought were complicated regimes of testing, boluses etc at the camp fairly independant of their parents and us. That train…

Hands up for insulin suppositories!

Nic — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:48:02 +0000

Ahem – I suppose ‘hands up’ might be a little too close to the bone on this subject. I saw this article a few days ago, and to be honest it didn’t really fill me with joy quite like the announcement about inhalable insulin a few years ago.

Apparently insulin suppositories are an area being explored for young children and older patients, who have trouble with injections. Which I suppose counts me out of the target market entirely. But I have to say – the improvements with diabetes which excite me are the ones which bring my life closer to the everyday person’s, not something which would see me having to run off to the toilet…

Oh deary me – so THAT’s what happens.

Nic — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:00:16 +0000

I came across this article recently and while it sounds like a particularly horrible thing to have happen (to summarise: a school nurse injected five teachers with insulin instead of a flu vaccine), it did answer a question I’ve pondered a few times – what happens if a non-diabetic gets injected with insulin?

I guess this answers it – if it’s a small amount, even if it’s intravenous – it will not kill said non-diabetic. I always assumed it would be close. You’d have to eat a pretty big handful of jelly snakes to get yourself out of that one I’m thinking!

(What has sparked this thought before is when people do that little joke with you –…

Insulin smash ‘n grab.

Nic — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 03:19:07 +0000

I saw this article come across the wire the other day and thought I’d sit down and read it properly over the weekend:

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=65390&catid=2

To summarise: a guy put a molotov cocktail under a woman’s car in Knoxville, Tennessee in order to send her car up in flames, create a diversion for the police and rob a pharmacy across town. Police assume he was after what was in the locked cabinet in the pharmacy (narcotics), but when he failed to get into this, he made a getaway with a tote bag of insulin.

If you read the article, then the comments underneath, there seems to be varying opinion. The police think the thief was after narcotics and would have been…

Running on empty.

Nic — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:28:28 +0000

It takes a little bit of getting used to, this pump business. On MDI (multiple daily injections) you can’t help but see how much insulin you have left in the vial because you are looking at it every time you inject.

However, on the pump you don’t look so much. The cartridge is round the side, at the back – you’re always looking at the screen as you navigate through all of the programming options. Which is not to say you don’t have full visibility at all times regarding how much there is left in the cartridge – there’s a display on the home screen indicating how many units you have left, and how much battery power you have…

It was a dark and stormy night…

Nic — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:31:50 +0000

So on Friday the news was all about this massive storm which was due to hit the North Island… Apparently the biggest in 10 years. Hmmm. Seemed pretty unbelieveable with the lovely day we had on Fri, and after working about 60 hours in five days, the last thing I wanted to do was head to the shops to stock up on candles etc (we are in the middle of making our way through the last season of the Sopranos…it’s important to have goals).

Saturday came and we kept an eye on the weather. It was raining very heavily (but we DO live in Auckland) and the wind got pretty high but by 2pm we were still pretty skeptical of…