I keep pen needles on until they start hurting now, which sometimes can be days, and I haven’t had a problem. I inject several times/day. If I inject through clothes it definitely wears the needle down faster, so I’m trying not to do that. It might depend on the insulin too though I did notice when I was using Levemir a few months ago that all of a sudden it wasn’t lasting as long or working as effectively. I almost never changed the needle since I only inject 2x/day, but read somewhere that Levemir can occlude in pen needles. Not sure if it’s true, but I change the needle every time now and even keep the pen in the fridge, and have found it to be extremely consistent.
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I don’t mean to embarrass anyone here, but I was raised in a family where as long as something was funny you had license to say it…
On MDI from 2006-2013, I got in the habit of injecting through my pants. I didn’t keep great track of where I was injecting b/c I couldn’t see my actual skin and the marks.
Now that I’m injecting for meals again, I’m injecting in my thighs and I try to always look at my skin and not inject through pants.
My Tactical Mom Uniform at home is typically work-out pants and a long work-out shirt. Since everything stays covered, I just slide down my pants at the dinner table and inject in my thigh like a responsible diabetic.
The unfortunate side effect (punch line) is that the phrase, “Mom’s taking her pants off at the dinner table again” is now commonplace.
I wonder if there is a Therapy version of a 529 that I can start for my kids…
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I have definitely noticed that Levemir will clot up a needle faster than any other insulin I have used. Sometimes after only 1 day and 1 or 2 shots it requires a new needle because it won’t come out anymore.
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And the insulin contains a preservative that I assume has an anti-microbial effect.
I thought those images were produced by the syringe manufacturers for advertising purposes. I supposed they prepared the needles for photography by jamming them through kevlar-reinforced elephant hide. Or maybe I just have delicate baby skin, but I put a syringe needle of mine under a 40x microscope after 3 uses and it looked like the “before use” photo. My rule of thumb was to discard the syringe after 4 uses or 12 hours, just for cleanliness.
Was it no longer working right? Because I’ve heard rumors that insulin actually lasts longer in practice than the 28 days at room temperature that the FDA has approved.
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lol. love it.
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I think it was hormonal. And by that I mean it doesn’t have anything to do with the timing of my cycle (because wouldn’t that make things easier), but some weeks I have random days where I’m riding at 180 for a few hours, despite a couple of doses of insulin and eating low-carb, for example. It seems like my body just does random things and they don’t correspond to things like I’d expect them to. That being said, since the insulin was one thing I could control, I thought I’d try switching it out. It didn’t really change anything.
I used vials of Fiasp for about 1.5 months before I thought it wasn’t working as well (or was it that I had been on Whole30 for awhile?), then back to Novolog for a couple of weeks with no difference, so going back to Fiasp again but using pens instead. It’s just never anything consistent for me!
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When I used NPH in a pen [for those not in the know NPH needs to be mixed before use.] , the advice I received was not to leave the needle on the NPH pen because if the pen leaks when the insulin was unmixed it may mess with the ratio of clear stuff and cloudy stuff.
Anyhow - because of that I got into the habit of taking the pen needle off. Also, the pen fits better into my meter case without the pen needle on.
But, I re-use the heck out of them.
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I don’t know. I keep the same needle on my Tresiba pen and the same needle on my Novolog pen until the cartridge is used up. Lazy I guess. But the insulin seems to work just fine and I haven’t had a site infection in 48 years.
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This is really quite funny, and something that would be said at my house followed by rolling laughter.
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Omg I laughed out loud at my desk. Got some strange looks 
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My sister is an RN. She said the “expiration date” of insulin is ridiculous. It’s a money ploy. My personal thoughts are that I’ve used insulin that was 60 days past the expiration date and had zero issues. And reality is that is does not really need to be refrigerated as long as the room temp is ambient. It’s no longer pig DNA. It’s recombinant DNA. It isn’t going to go bad because you left it on the counter. Otherwise someone please explain how I can wear my pump out in the HOT sun for three days straight and have no issues with my insulin performance. It’s a money ploy.
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i do most of my changes when i get home from the pool. i have been swimming in chlorine for an hour and a half and then i shower right when i get out of the pool. as soon as i walk in my front door i race to my bag of diabetic goodies and dig into my pump supplies for a fresh one. i have to admit that i am not always as responsible as i should be; i dont always remember to use an alcohol wipe 
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Hi @allison! This is also the first time I have ever heard your pharmacist’s concern. Many of us routinely use insulin way after it’s official discard date, and there are many threads on this site which show experiments showing the robustness of insulin.
So, when I look at your question, I would intuitive that I suppose there are some very slim odds that it might happen to someone, but that these odds are truly very low. So low that we would not worry about it in my household.
FYI we are parents of a T1 and also tend to be extra careful with our kid. We use alcohol wipes on every pump and CGM site. We do not use them on pen injection or lancet sites, and we resuse our pen needles and lancets until they get blunt.
Surprisingly I read recently that the animal insulins could last for years, but it’s the human and analogue insulins that degrade so quickly. I left my pump tubing exposed for a few hours in the hot sun at the beach once and the insulin was useless when I got home, so these things can make a difference. I agree though most of these precautions are for commercial rather than safety reasons - most especially telling people the pump reservoir and tubing must be changed every 3 days or the insulin will degrade!
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I would be curious to find out if the heat or the sunlight is what destroyed the insulin effectiveness in your tubing.
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Or the heat/sunlight degrading the plastic tubing, which in turn messed up the insulin (rather than directly affecting the insulin).
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