Type 1 - Connect

Dear all,

In 2019, I travelled in Central Asia in April and May when it was hot. I took with me a small thermoelectric "fridge" that ran on the power cells you can purchase at places like JB HiFi or any other electronics type store. I had 4 x 12000 milliamp hour cells. Each one lasts around  10 hours. I set the temperature to 12C and there it stayed for the 3-weeks we were away and where the temperatures got up to 38C. The batteries got charged when we got to our hotel at nights. That was the technological sledgehammer to solve the temperature problem.

I now have the gel-packs that keep the temperature at 24C or so from Diabetes Australia. They are "renewable" simply by dunking in cold water for about 5 minutes when they dry out. They are great. I have two of these wallets. They can potentially last forever and are much cheaper than my mini-fridge. Simple. We are travelling in North Queensland soon. The gel packs will be going with me.

All that said to keep insulin cool, I had a major incident in August last year when we travelled out west for a business trip lasting a week. I took two spare insulin 3ml vials to recharge my pump. These I put into the freezer wallet designed to last 24-36 hours. Unfortunately and unthinkingly, I put the wallet into the esky with a load of frozen food. Result: the insulin must have frozen. Insulin, once frozen, definitely does not work. A change of a pump-set after dinner began innocuously enough. BSL went high but it kept on climbing to the HI (> 35mmol/l) level by midnight.  Goodness knows where it went. No food, pump more insulin in, totally ineffective. Result Diabetic Keto Acidosis (DKA). By then we were on dirt roads travelling to Menindee from Hillston. My wife drove like "a bat out of hell" at 140-150 km/h on dirt roads. A telephone call to a Chemist in Broken Hill set things up. A script got faxed through from Bathurst. It was too late for fresh insulin. A trip to the ED at Broken Hill and an expert Triage Nurse, got me admitted to the ED and then Intensive Care in short order. Intravenous Dextrose and Insulin started to bring the BSL down to a level where the glucometer could give a reading other than HI. This was followed by an RFDS flight to Orange (not to Adelaide where they wanted to send me). An angiogram followed showing major narrowing of 2 coronary arteries. Decision – bypass surgery and a flight by Air Ambulance NSW to Sydney. At Sydney the stretcher I was strapped into fell out of the aeroplane – literally – as I was being hoisted out. Shock! Horror! My first words to the frozen ambulance folk was "Gentlemen, the eagle has landed". I was ok. I had this premonition that "something" was going to happen. It did! I was braced for impact and my head was cradled. I fell head first, with the feet end of the stretcher caught on the deck of the aeroplane! So, DKA, a suspected heart-attack and a fall resulted in me buying a lottery ticket, which got a small prize but not the "big one". Talk about "LUCK".

Moral of story: Insulin is VERY IMPORTANT; Don't freeze it – use the wallets; and, DKA can be a killer – have enough backup insulin or carry a script with you.

I am ok. There was no heart damage. I had a double bypass and am good for a Kellion Medal when I get to 60, 70 and 80 years of Type 1. So, the surgeon said anyway. ��

Cheers

David

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