I really could use a Diabetes vacation and so could my poor pump abused skin...

I am having one of those days where I just wish I could not have to think about my Diabetes.

I swear doing a pump change every 3-4 days makes me go into this dumb rut.  The rut that I dont want to be in or think about.  My skin scars pretty easily, like that ugly reddish purple type scar.  Yeah thats what my skin does for months to years I can see it.

The side of my hip and love handle area look like a purple polka dotted map of scars from insulin pump infusion sites.  I hate it and I dont hate it.  I know that my t:slim insulin pump is saving my life and prolonging my life by many years but I hate the marks it (infusion sets) leaves behind on my skin.  I hate it. I look at it and I feel so upset that I have to keep doing this to myself.  Then my mind wonders into, why do I have to have this damned disease, why the hell cant they just cure it already?  I am so sick and tired of all the carb counting, weighing my food, guessing carbs, guessing too low, guessing too high, changing my pump out, changing my Dexcom sensor (which has been freaking stabbing me since my husband put it on me yesterday and its ticking me off), poking my finger, buying test strips, paying a fortune for insulin, paying a fortune for pump and cgm supplies, the list goes on and on.



If I didnt have to pay for all this crap every year it would be like an extra $5,000-$10,000 in my pocket.  Thats 96.15-192.30 EVERY WEEK that I could keep.  Last year my medical bills cost $19,000 and that is just freaking INSANE. 

I have only pumped for 5 years and I am just dotted with scars.  How do you guys who have pumped longer have anywhere left to go and not be just one giant scar spot?  PLEASE anyone who is a long term pumper leave me some comments.  I know people online who have pumped for 20-30 years!  I dont have that many places I can wear my pump and not be in incredible pain.  See there's that damn rut, what if what if what if.  What if in 10-20 years I can no longer pump because of all the stupid freaking scars?

My love handle area, hips, butt, and about 2-4 spots on my legs that work, period that is it for insulin pump infusion site placement. Lower back and legs give me fits, the absorption there is just terrible, I run high non stop.  Arms and abdomen burn, the kind of burning pain you cannot ignore or tolerate, trust me I have tried hard.  The last time I used my arm the burning was bad but I dealt with it for 3 days and after I took it out I had nerve pain of some crazy sort in that arm for several months.  It was crazy.  I feel like I am some sort of weird crazy Diabetic because of all these issues I have but I have talked to others who have the same problem but we are so few and far between that no one in the medical field says they have heard of someone who cant wear their pump on their stomach or arms.  WELL thats my problem and I guess I just have to own it.  Dexcom on my arm works great, no pain but man it sends my Keratosis pilaris into full blown craziness. My left arm looks like I have some crazy skin condition on it now.  I just feel like my Diabetes is winning sometimes. 

That and why the heck do I have such hard tough skin?  To shove a comfort short infusion set (45 degree set) into my skin sometimes it feels like I am pushing so hard and indenting my skin so far that im shoving a needle into leather.  Most the time this happens then it ends up harpooning into my skin and I hit a dang blood vessel, and man that hurts.  So I gotta take it back out, apply pressure so I dont get a bruise the size of a softball on my side and start over again.  I cant leave a set in blood because it always shoots back up into the cannula and then insulin never clears it out and the set goes bad because the insulin cannot clear out the clotted up blood in the cannula.

What if in 10 years I have the stupid freaking internal scar tissue that you cannot put insulin into because of bad absorption?  I already have a ton of it on my stomach, that after we decide on more kids or not I am going to get a tummy tuck.  I dont care if I have to work 3 jobs, I am getting this freaking disgusting hard nodule lumpy crap hacked off my stomach.   I hate it, and hate is too tame of a word for it.  I want it gone, off my body.  Its a constant reminder of what happens when you are a moron idiotic diabetic and dont rotate your stupid freaking injections enough and when you have a crappy horrible endo that shouldnt be even treating people with Diabetes (one of my previous endos who since retired, thank GOD).  Injections there's another topic that lights a fire under my @ss.  Injections were pure hell and the giant blue and purple bruises I got from every single shot, or damn near, what a nightmare that crap was.  I have no idea why I did that to myself for 8 dog gone years, 8 years.  What a freaking disaster.  I had zero control of my insanely insulin sensitive diabetes on shots.  If I were an endo and saw a patient like me I would be pounding on them to go on a pump the dosages are so much smaller and fine tuned and that is what MY Diabetes requires.

Just to mention, today's t:slim insulin pump site change took me 40 minutes.  Yep you read that right 40.  Couldn't find a dang spot that didn't hit blood when I stabbed myself and trying to navigate around all my purple scar dots.

I love my t:slim pump but despise pump site changes and I wish there was some way I could think of it differently but after 5 years I still hate them, but definetly less than the first year.  That was not fun, I have no idea how I stuck it out.  Oh wait, it could possibly be the fact that I am stubborn and very determined.