Lesson Learned: Don’t Overfill Your t:slim Cartridges
Yesterday morning after breakfast, after I could no longer ignore the vibrations coming from the needy insulin pump in my pocket, I swapped out the cartridge on my t:slim.
I slowly drew insulin from my penfill cartridge into the syringe, filling it all the way up to its 3ml capacity. After tapping and priming the air bubbles from my syringe, I stuck the needle into my black t:slim cartridge and began to slowly inject the insulin in.
As I tried to continue pushing that last bit of insulin from my syringe into the cartridge, I was met with a little resistance. The cartridge must have been nearing full.
I knew I should have stopped then and there. Except that I didn’t.
After pushing a little more in, I pulled the syringe out and slid the cartridge into place on my pump. I was feeling a little hesitant, but figured I’d be able to pick up on anything weird soon enough.
I had lunch a little later on, and found myself at 10.6 when I checked my blood sugar afterwards. Which felt plausible, given that I had also eaten ice cream with my lunch. I can never seem to bolus for ice cream quite right.
After some correction insulin, a walk and nothing more than a coffee that afternoon, I was still lingering around the 10 mark.
After loads of corrections that evening, I don’t know why I didn’t just replace my insulin cartridge before I went to bed.
I guess a part of me was seeing the 200+ units of insulin in the pump, and didn’t want to be wasteful by throwing it away if there was actually nothing wrong.
After a full correction at bedtime that had little effect by the time I woke up at 5.30am this morning, I hauled myself out of bed and made a dash to the fridge. I swapped out my cartridge for a fresh one, this time only filling to around the 2ml mark on my syringe.
Yes, Frank was told to put less insulin into his cartridges when he got set up on his t:slim a few weeks ago. But Frank also didn’t like to be wasteful and wanted to get his money’s worth from the cartridges that he paid for with his hard earned money. Frank also doesn’t like not being able to reuse these cartridges like could with his Animas pump.
Anyhow, lesson learned.
Don’t overfill your t:slim cartridges. It just feels like your insulin isn’t working.
