The naked man and a brief white knuckle moment

I’m naked! Just like my primordial ancestors who hunted the giant woolly mammoth! Of course, I’m not hunting anything. I’m in the shower. But for that brief 15 minutes every three days I get to be naked. No tubes poking through my skin. No transmitter. Just skin, the way God intended!

I am the cave man. I am the wild man. I am the guy who is kidding himself... my body is coursing with genetically engineered insulin analog, Sythroid, and Lipitor. If I were a cave man, I’d be a dead one. Without all my high-tech goodies and meds to keep me alive I’d be a goner before that wooly mammoth could turn around and stomp me into the ground. And without my glasses I’d never even see him coming anyway...

But for 15 minutes I can let the water cascade off of my body without worrying about getting my various tapes too wet. I can scrub with impunity without worrying about knocking something off or pulling any thing out. I can relish the illusion of freedom. I can image what it would be like if they found a CURE.

I often make my on-line diabetic friends angry because I am highly skeptical that there will ever be a cure; but I feel blessed to live in times when we have such wonderful treatments. I don’t really care if they ever cure me so long as they keeping coming up with new and better ways to keep me alive.

After my brief flirtation with normality, it is site change day. I used to leave the old infusion set in until I was sure the new one was OK, but after a hundred or so with no trouble I decided the brief joy of being truly naked out weighted the remote possibility of needing the old site.

I put in the Comfort set for the Cozmo first, fill up the cartridge with insulin, check the hose for air bubbles and hook up. Then it’s on to the Guardian. It makes the site change ritual a little bit longer, but no by much. Hooking back up is pretty easy.

I did mislead all of you a while back when I said I could see no use for the On/Off switch. I turn her off when I take out the site for my shower on site change day, and turn her back on again when I hook back up.

Today I used the inserter device again, and I’m really starting to like it. I haven’t got the knack of putting the sensor in the inserter just yet. I spent about five minutes at it today. There is a small hole at one end. For some reason my feeble brain wants to put the needle through the hole. That won’t work. The hole is for the hub that the transmitter’s cable plugs into. I’ll take some pictures in three days to show you.

After an uneventful hook up, I had breakfast and headed out for work. With my hand on the door knob, and one foot out the door the Guardian alarmed. Her screen read “C54 Check Glucose Sensor.” Huh? That’s new. Back inside. Coat off. Where did I put the manual? On page 71, Troubleshooting and Alarms, the book tells me the alarm is caused by the monitor picking up “a sensor current that is outside the operation range.” I’m told that if I get the alarm two more times to replace the sensor. Oh man....

So I take the manual with me to work. Just in case.

I obsesses for about an hour and a half. Will I get another alarm? Will I have to replace a sensor I just put in? How often will this happen? I get bad test strips now and then. No big deal. But a bad sensor at $40 bucks is a big deal to me.

Any way, nothing happens. The sensor settles in and I spend my day processing film...not hunting wooly mammoth.