Hi,
My daughter started kindergarten this September and is on MDI. It has been very challenging to say the least. Shes high most of the day,shes always sick. The school can only correct every 3 hours, where when she was home with me, I would do it sooner based off of dexcom readings. I am thinking switching to the pump would be easier. Tubeless would be a plus. We got an omnipod sample sent to us and she didnt seem to mind us sticking it on her which is huge, since she fights us on everything. In your opinion, what is the best pump for a 6 year old?
Thanks.
Natalie
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Our #1 requirement was tubeless because, at their age (my son was diagnosed at 2 and is going on 6 now), they will most certainly get tubes snagged and yank out sites which would have been a headache for us. So we went with the POD - a self-contained pump. We also transitioned to the Omniloop which has so far been very good; albeit, definitely no easy button. There isn’t anything easy about D-Management in kids our kids ages (or teenagers), but loop helps with nighttime highs and helps compensate for under bolused foods (temp basals see the rise and kick up the delivery amount for basal.)
So, I definitely (am biased of course) recommend Omnipod and then transitioning into Omniloop. We were MDI the first 6 months of diagnosis and going to the PUMP was definitely worth it - more finite control of rises and falls than you can get with the MDI syringes. With the Omnipod you can do .05 deliveries, which, as you know can still be a lot in kids our kids ages and sizes.
We were 6.9 A1C for the first 2 years and then this year we attained a 6.1 A1C. We currently are hovering around that same A1C.
Good luck to you and your daughter!!
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For a young child, I think the omnipod would be best. You should look at different pumps and see which one you like the most, but lack of a tube and waterproof are ideal for a young one.
If you go with omnipod, do NOT get the new Dash version. Get the older version, the UST400 version of the PDM. This gives you the option to try Looping later.
If you were to do Looping though, I would advise you to wait until you are comfortable with just normal pump use before jumping into the Looping thing.
Super important, I will say it again since an endo would probably try to tell you to get Dash. Don’t get that one, get the older UST400 version of the PDM and pods.
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For a different opinion, our Ped Endo told us she is recommending the Tandem t:slim X2 to all her new Pediatric patients.
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Do you have less lows.on the omnipod pump? Was it complicatd to learn? Is pumping much more expensive? Sorry for all the questions. We are all afraid of making the switch, mostly because.of the unknown.
The other question I have about the omnipod is, does it rip off easily? Sometimes her dexcom gets ripped of with clothing easily, we have to be so careful.
Yes. We still have more lows than we want, but because you can dose at much lower rates, the lows are much less (or we aren’t feeding the insulin as often). Additionally, on MDI, the Lantus (basal) was OK, but there were times of the day where he needed more or less basal and pump allows you to explicitely define basal rates for each timeframe as you need - not just 1 shot that should work (but never done in children our kids ages.) Also, because you can bolus smaller, you don’t have to feed the insulin in that way as well. All the way around, the pump allows for more granular dosing which prevents or helps stave off, lows.
Not at all. It only took a day or two to learn the system and a few weeks to be really comfortable to the point where we were making the changes we needed for our son to make his BG range better. (Before pump, we also rode high most of the time - pump, after dialing in the settings gets rid of much of the constant highs (2 to 300’s for hours and hours at a time. Yes, you still go up there, but the dosing and more granular control makes the rises much shorter.)
That’s hard to determine because everyone has a different insurance plan (or none at all.) Out of pocket, for a 90-day supply of everything we need (besides pods and CGM supplies) costs us zero dollars.
We pay $100/mo on our PODs (payment plan with Omnipod). We pay $200 every 90-days for the CGM Sensors. The transmitters run us about $200 every 6 months. We use our HSA monies for all of this.
But again, the cost is going to be determined by your insurance and other variables such as company perks.
That is what we are all here for and why we created this forum - to help each other!
So, ask away!
Going to the CGM and Pump were the best decisions we ever made. CGM #1 best thing and Pump #1 best thing.
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Liam rips one or two off a month. To help them not come off, I usually cut a small piece of opsite flexfix and place it at the front (the side with the cannula coming out - the rounded side.) This helps it stay down better. But kids will rip them off…they bump things all the time, they jump around and play w/o thinking about their cyborg devices, so they do come off. The good news is that Insulet replaces them if we rip them off, or for any other reason for that matter.
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Thank you SO much!!
If it rips off, can you transfer the insulin to another pod?
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Yes. If day 1 we do it. If days 2 or 3 we just dispose of it
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So would the school nurse just enter in her carbs in the pump, and the pump will do the rest?
Yes. After you have ic and other things configured
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That would be better. Right now.its so involved with the ratios and corrections. And if I want to make a change it’s such a big deal.
If you go the loop route you can remotely monitor everything via Nightscout which is a huge deal for me personally. If I see a potential problem I can text or call the nurse
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It all sounds amazing. I dont know why its taken me so long to make the switch. Partially it was her age. But school is driving me crazy, so its what’s really pushed me forward. At home, mdi was easy.
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nurse would also need to enter blood glucose reading
My 3yo daughter used Omnipod with humlog. We used MDI with humalog and lantus before this.
I think it is really great that you ordered and tried the sample. Even better that your daughter didn’t seem to mind it.
Definitely less lows and highs with pump. i think Audrey is 5hours per day more in range (70-180) on average since starting on omnipod. I think it is important to understand that if you try Omnipod on Monday-Tuesday and then want to do MDI for a few days you can do that. then you would just try another pod on Friday again.
I don’t think it is complicated to learn to use it. It may take you 1-3 weeks to get the settings right I think you will see an improvement almost immediately. I wouldn’t recommend Omniloop and nightscout for now - I would suggest just getting omnipod up and running.
The real benefit is that you can correct in much smaller doses. As an example if my daughter does to 156 I will give her 0.1 units. For Audrey 0.1u humalog roughly = 16points correction.
Like others on forum I have some additional advise but I think it is best to get started and then get into the finer points of improving your experience.
I am happy to share all of Audreys omnipod settings with you if you want and go through some things that we learned and changed. You would not use the same settings but at least you could see some settings from a working system and get an idea of what can be changed
Ed
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Definitely agree that you should get some experience with “pumping” before you switch to “looping”. We were already using the PODs for 3 years or so before the Omniloop system came out.
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Thanks Ed! This is all great advice. I’m so happy I have all of you to come to with questions.
Looping sounds so great from what I am reading about it. I spend so much of my day worrying about highs and lows when my daughter is at school, staring at my phone. I am really hoping that by her going on the pump, I will worry less as her blood sugar will be more steady.