Hi, I'm Nick. I was 79, 3 months ago. I have been a T1D since I was almost 40 years old. A couple years ago, I calculated I have given myself >55,000 syringe injections of insulin. No worse than a slap in the face each time. I am a Vietnam Navy veteran, spent most of my time at CamRanh and VungTo as an A/C. Lost my good conduct medal over there. So the Veterans Administration finally put me on aTandem X2 insulin pump a few years ago, and it has been working well for me. Dropped my A1C down to 7 +/- 0.2, and I am happy. I have stubby fingers and pushing the wake-up button and up and down the menu screen's makes me feel like Shrek. After I started to use the pump and of course the infusion sets, I rather quickly started having problems of high blood sugar and I'd be squeezing that pump like a rubber ducky trying to get more insulin. Finally learned, the solution is always, "change the infusion set". And that worked every time. Fortunately, the VA supplies me for free. My conclusion was that the cannula was bending as I pulled out/then released the infusion set insertion device. The pull-out would cause my skin and the set's tape to flex and "tent" and when the skin and tape relaxed back to normal position, the cannula did not go cleanly back into the hole from which it was partially pulled. Solution was simple, I would use a butter knife to help press the tape and skin flat while the inserter was removed, and that works pretty well. I then removed a couple tines from a fork and that worked better because it held down 2 sides of the tape. So my grandson, the one with HDS, Hockey Deranged Syndrome, suggested I have some forks 3D printed and sell 'em. I checked with some Patent Agents and Lawyers and it would cost between $5,000 and $8,000 to apply for a patent, so I filed it by myself for a lot less.
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