Garage door opener. Beeper. Control panel? TV remote control.
What’s the strangest thing your insulin pump has been mistaken for?
(image from @sixuntilme on Instagram)
Garage Door Opener
Diabetes Tech, Pumping Insulin, Robot Life
Garage door opener. Beeper. Control panel? TV remote control.
What’s the strangest thing your insulin pump has been mistaken for?
(image from @sixuntilme on Instagram)
I was interviewing for a summer internship at a clandestine government agency 😉 and an employee very seriously approached me and let me know that recording devices were strictly prohibited.
I was at the doctor’s office having a fetal echocardiogram with my second kiddo. We chatted very briefly about what sort of issues he would be looking for in a baby of a diabetic mom. After about half an hour of ultrasound, his pager went off, and I joked that that’s what doctors do to try to fit in with the diabetics. :p
Questioner: Is that an electroshock device that sends charges of electricity to your heart to keep it beating.
Me: You mean like an external pacemaker?
Questioner: Yes
Me: Yes it is if you touch it our hearts will beat in sync.
Best response to what is that?
It is my communicator to the planet Xzlon 14. It was implanted by the Xtraplatons at the time I was sent here to colonize this planet. So far it has worked. Just asked my 723 earthling children.
I overheard a mom tell her child, who was asking about my CGM site, that I was trying to quit smoking. Ha!
LOL!! A good friend of mine (who lives with chronic illnesses but not diabetes) used to shove her phone into her bra in solidarity when we’d see one another. Never failed to make me giggle … or warm my heart. 🙂
I have a t-slim which I suppose could be a tiny smart phone. A friend I was dining with once saw me fiddling with it to program a bolus and said, “oh, do you have to get that?”
Ha! I’m currently pregnant, and had a mom at the pool explain to her son that it was a fetal heart rate monitor…you can’t hear the baby’s heart rate, so this was apparently a way to see it in real time. That’s definitely been the weirdest one for me so far.
Congratulations on your pregnancy!! <3 (And your high-tech "fetal monitor." 😉 )
I was asked if it was a step tracker…
I teach sixth grade and wear a microphone in my class. Four weeks into this school year after overhearing a conversation with a classmate on my pump, one student said he just thought it was part of my microphone.
Thanks Kerri!
I really was asked once if it was a garage door opener. Have you ever in your life known one single person who has ever WORN their garage door opener?
(it was at lunch time at work, so it would not have even been like I had just left the house and closed the garage)
I bring my garage door opener everywhere with me, so when they ask that question I can whip out the actual garage door opener and (like in Crocodile Dundee) say, “No, THIS is a garage door openah!”
I was at the chiropractor once and had my pump in my bra. The chiropractor saw it and slowly asked… “Is that a gun…?”
Haha!
One time I was walking and this girl stopped on her bike and she said “Hey, I think you have something stuck to you.” She pointed at my leg. It didn’t even register that she might be talking about my insulin pump (an Omnipod), so I just looked at her, confused. She seemed shocked that I couldn’t see it and she was like, “Dude! It’s one of those ketchup packets! Right there!” She started to reach out toward it before my brain kicked in and I realized she thought it was one of those hard fast food containers of plastic with the top that peels off. To be fair, it did look pretty similar.
I explained to her, “Oh, this is an insulin pump. It’s a medical device.” I have NEVER seem someone look so horrified and embarrassed. I was just trying not to laugh. I hope she forgave herself for that because it made my day. Just the thought that someone could walk around not realizing a container of ketchup was stuck to their leg.