It finally happened. I had to cut today’s ride short because my infusion site fell out during the ride.

The planned destination for today was Genoa, Illinois which is about 65 mile bike ride from Joliet. As I approached the town of Geneva, I stopped to let Pat know where I was, check the blood sugar (162), and drink some water. The day had started out cloudy with a light fog, but by 11 AM, the clouds had cleared away and it was getting very warm. Highs today are expected to reach 92 degrees. While I was stopped, I took a quick look at my infusion site to see how it was doing. It was on my left side, just above my waist. When I rolled up my jersey, the site came up with the jersey. Oops. Change of plans, folks. Time to bail out of the rest of the ride and fix my infusion site before my blood sugar rises to dangerous levels. The 162 was near the top of where I like to see my blood sugar during a ride, so I felt a need to get moving. I called Pat again and arranged a spot in Geneva to meet. It was just a couple miles away. When we got there, I put the bike on the bike rack and we drove to a motel near Geneva. By the time I got showered and put in a new infusion site, my blood sugar had reached 205. A bit high, but at least it wasn’t dangerously high.

I hadn’t expected to have troubles with my infusion site today. Yesterday, I located a pharmacy in Joliet that sold the IV3000 that I’ve been looking for. I bought a box ($72 for 100 sheets. Ouch!) and after I switched to a new site last night, I figured my site problems were over. The other product I use on my infusion sites is called Skin-Prep. I had eliminated it as a source of the troubles because I had located a new supply of it a few days ago. I tried a new site using the new Skin-Prep and didn’t notice any differences in how the site was at the end of a ride. So, that pointed towards the IV3000 as the source.

So, now I’m searching for answers again. My current theories are:

1. The adhesive on my current supply of IV3000 is OK and the source of the site problems is something else. But, what is the source of my site problems? Is it simply the extra humidity that I’m not used to? Let me tell you, it’s really humid around here and when my jersey spends most of the day soaking wet, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is at least contributing to the problem.
2. The adhesive on the new supply of IV3000 isn’t in any better condition than my existing supply. It very well could be this. I took a look at the expiration date that’s printed on the wrapper of each sheet of IV3000. The new supply that I bought has an expiration date of June 2007. The expiration date on my existing supply is August 2007. Hmmm.

So, the mystery continues. It’s one of those challenges of having diabetes. As frustrating as it is, you can’t give up on it though. You can’t even tell yourself “I’ll work on it next week when I have more time” because diabetes doesn’t take a break, ever.

I think what I’m going to do next is try to locate another supply of IV3000 because it’s still my top suspect at this point. This time though, I’ll get a smaller supply and I’ll also double-check the expiration date before I buy it.

Oh yes, before I forget, today’s ride started out very nice. I headed west out of Joliet and within a couple miles, I came across some bike trails headed north and south. I decided to take a chance that they went somewhere that I wanted to go. They did. I was only on them for a few miles, but it was a nice break from the rush hour traffic.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 28th, 2006 at 1:03 pm and is filed under The Dream Tour, Diabetes, Bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.