I Didn’t Know That!

August 17th, 2010 by Amy Gonsalves Leave a reply »

I see that the NovoPen is celebrating a birthday this year—it turns 25! 

I had no idea.  Should I have gotten a card?  Shoot.  I must have been distracted by the fact that TODAY IS MY MOM’S BIRTHDAY.  Happy Birthday Mom!  But I digress.

The pen was first introduced in 1985, which makes me feel really old because I remember 1985.  Dang.  But anyway, it makes me really wonder why I never used a pen to take my insulin.

Well, I guess one reason would be that I was taking way too much insulin when I was younger—more than three times what I take now.  Slightly frightening.  I saw a new doctor once who told me to simply cut my dosage in half.  Scary, but wouldn’t you know it; my blood sugars didn’t change.  Talk about a lot of extra insulin.

(Alright; now I’m afraid that someone is going to try this because I told you I did it.  DON’T CHANGE YOUR INSULIN BECAUSE I SAID SOMETHING.  Go ahead and ask your doctor, but don’t think I did anything smart back then when it came to diabetes—I didn’t.)

But back to the pen.  I used it two years ago when I tried going off my pump for a week or so.  It was okay but not what I’m used to—I’m used to the vial and knocking the air bubbles out as I flick my fingers against the syringe.  But the pen was nice and it was convenient!

I remember—when I was a new type one and desperate for anything that didn’t involve a needle—seeing an ad for a device that looked like the pen but was needleless.  It essentially blew the insulin through someone’s skin and misted into the body.  Geez I wanted that thing almost as much as I wanted a puppy.

I never got it, though; eventually after I saw it enough I figured there was NO WAY that thing worked like the picture said it would. 

But I never got the pen, either, and now I wonder why.  Was it not as prevalent then as it is now?  I mean, I took shots for years and no one ever asked me if I wanted to try the pen.  I would have used it, I think.  I took shots at school every day and could have really used something less bulky than my little bright blue cooler thing (which really was a pretty good gadget, insulated somehow with spaces for vials and spaces for syringes all in a checkbook-sized container). 

I bet there are thousands of type ones who never learned how to draw up a syringe.  They don’t need to know because there are pens everywhere.  Wacky!  And here it was, thinking everyone with type one had to know how to do.  I guess not—at least since 1985.

So better late than never: Happy birthday, insulin pen!

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