Thank you so much for responding! I don't think that the Dexcom caused any scarring--but I had a lot of problems with it when i wore it on my abdomen because of the scarring caused by all those injections through the decades (I probably made this much worse by injecting through my clothes when I wanted to stay where I was and be discrete). I was interested that you also have absorption issues with your pump. Have those issues gotten any worse with age--or do they seem like something that just goes along with pump use? I also use the methods you mention (finger sticks, checking for drops, sometimes using a needle for a correction). The phantom insulin (great phrase!) does sometimes come back to haunt me--or as I tend to put it -bite me in the butt-lowering my normal insulin needs by absorbing very slowly over the next half day or so. I also have had my sleep interrupted by an occlusion alarm or mysterious highs--and have spent too much time with late night or early morning tv while waiting to see how things are going. Still--I am much more stable on the pump and it usually works very well. I recall that I used to have mysterious highs that might have been caused by absorption issues when I just used injections--and had fewer ways to zero in on the problem. All those injections were shots in the dark (so to speak).