Last night, shortly after midnight, I was awakened by David's insulin pump making its "siren" sound. When I checked it, the error message was "Button Error", and it was impossible to get rid of it no matter what I did. So I had to disconnect it from him and put it in the refrigerator (so that we couldn't hear it going off every few minutes). Then I had trouble getting back to sleep, of course, and so I also got up a couple of hours late.
I used to have telephone numbers for the representatives of the insulin pump company here in Israel, but I had lost them, so after breakfast we just headed over to the Maccabi (our HMO) nurses. They contacted Agentek (the company) and gave them our number. By noon, they had contacted us to let us know they were working on getting David another pump. A little later, they gave me the number of a nurse at Klalit (a different HMO from ours) here in Eilat who had an old pump. I called her and arranged to come over to get it after 4:00 p.m., which I did. She had some trouble with old batteries and some difficulty figuring out which of the 3 pumps she had would actually work. She finally gave me one, and I headed out, going to Shufersal to do the weekly grocery shopping before coming home.
When I got home, I found that the new pump was also not working, but in a different way. I finally was able to again contact the Agentek guy, who suggested that I try a fresh battery. That did the trick, so now David has a working insulin pump again.
Agentek was really going BEYOND the call of duty today because David's pump was already out of warranty. In fact, he is supposed to get another one, but the paper-work has to be submitted by the diabetes doctor, and we are still waiting for an appointment with him. I'm hoping that I can get them to have him fill it out BEFORE actually seeing us, since we HAVE seen him several times before. It shouldn't be a problem, but we'll see. In the meantime, David has a pump.
We managed to control David's blood sugar levels fairly well today, even without the pump, by giving him insulin shots. I told David he was lucky that I am the son of a nurse (my dad) and someone who wanted to be one but never quite made it (my mom).
We ate lunch at Café Greg today. David had cheese ravioli with mushroom cream sauce, and I had a sabikh sandwich.
In the evening, we went back over to Ice Park and had frozen yogurts.
No comments:
Post a Comment