"New" to Omnipod and Pumping: 4 years in and I feel like I'm missing something

[TravelingOn]

Hi @T1Allison! Welcome!

My partner EH has T1, and recently switched from Humalog and Lantus/Tujeo/Triseba (we tried them all) to the OmniPod. Lots of stuff to love about it (suspending basal for exercise, for example) but many knobs to fine tune. We are also still trying to figure it out.

We’ve found our endo and CDE to be somewhat useless in the struggle to dial it in, honestly. And EH just goes for it when it comes to making basal adjustments on his own.

@Eric is super helpful (and probably why EH has been willing to try pumping from an adequate run using MDI for 10 years). Switching from Humalog to NovoLog has made the biggest difference with the pump. We used Humalog from November until March and it sucked. Regularly not working well past day 2 with Humalog. Awful, prolonged highs which we didn’t catch as a pump failure because it never threw an occlusion alarm. NovoLog has majorly reduced that issue. Also, we’ve asked for a site change every two days. And we second @Eric’s advice to use plenty of body real estate - I hear his voice in my head chanting “if you can pinch an inch!” all the time (well, about every two or three days when I help EH stick a pod somewhere hard to reach). Also, we’ve recently done heat baked desert backpacking with no insulation on the insulin and it worked fine. It was rather fresh NovoLog but it worked and it was above 86° and stored in a backpack/not refrigerated. YDMV of course.

Great advice has come from here on this forum.

What do you love about the OmniPod?

I thought it was about time to start a positive thread about the OmniPod! It’s been almost a month since @EricH has been pumping with the OmniPod and overall it’s been a good experience. Things we love: ease of microbolusing for correction (don’t have to get out the supplies to inject) different ratios for correction factor and insulin to carbohydrate ratios depending on the time of day not having to mess around with basal injections right before bed not having to pull out the pen and needle…

Failing Omnipod: slow leak

It has occurred to me that we are going to adopt @Millz strategy of asking for a pod change every two days. Last night, around 11 PM, we had another failure. Truthfully, it probably failed a lot earlier, as a slow leak, and we didn’t catch it.

How to deal with an Omnipod allergy

How do you deal with an allergic reaction to an OmniPod when you want to wear a tubeless pump? Many Omnipod users suffer from allergic reactions, which make it difficult for them to withstand a Pod for 3 days. These allergies sometimes come and go, or suddenly show up after years of use with no trouble. There is a large online literature of forums posts and blogs that discuss issues and potential solutions. The present series of posts summarizes some of these online reports. Caveat: it should …

@Chris and @Aaron and @Millz and @Beacher have had great podding suggestions. Two days and change, locations to try, noticing if you skyrocket and being willing to pull it and start again, smelling insulin suggests a leak, bolusing upon application and never bolusing more than 5 or so units at one time. NovoLog! Do it! Also, eat! I agree with @Chris - lower carb can make the results easier. And if you think that the high won’t abate, try brisk exercise if possible (walk fast, vacuum, rake or sweep, all seem to bring EH’s BG back into range when insulin won’t touch it.)

And here’s to feeling better soon!