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

So…either my Dexcom was super behind or I really was “low” for an hour after dinner (70’s…I don’t want @Eric rolling his eyes at me). I had already tested 15 times today so I didn’t really feel like testing again since even though my head felt mushy, that could have been fake. It was fine.

ANYWAY, all of that was while I was decorating my soon-to-be 5 year old’s cake for his birthday tomorrow. It occurs to me that being a baker/cake decorator would be one of the safest jobs for a diabetic. I figured if I ever actually felt low (which I’m not at all convinced that I can anymore), I would just redirect my decorator tools straight into my mouth and I’d be fine in a hurry.

Excavator cake turned out great. #winning

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I find shots absorb so much faster on MDI and NovoRapid works at about the speed of Fiasp in my pump, only more consistently. I really don’t find pre-bolusing nearly as important as it is with pumping, except if I am stressed or eating something extremely high GI. I can’t eat toast for breakfast on a pump with NovoRapid, even if I pre-bolus, without a huge spike. I don’t experience this on MDI, and barely pre-bolus, if at all.

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That’s super interesting and helpful!!

So…stayed home from work to celebrate Kiddo 2’s 5th birthday. I almost never “eat in” at restaurants because of schedule pressure, but the boys love doing that with their babysitter. So I thought I would take them to lunch and let them play in the playground (Chick Fil A) after lunch since I rarely do that with them.

Restaurant is full. Crazy full. But we get a good seat and I order food and I had pre-bolused a unit to trend correctly before my salad. They ate fast and ran off to the playground. I finished my salad. Then all hell broke loose.

I heard screaming and gasping and the restaurant went dead silent as my 5 year comes out of the glassed-in-playground area with purple blood spurting out from between his eyes. My 8 year is screaming and calling for me. I reach up and hold close the laceration as best as I can guess where it is b/c you couldn’t see through all of the blood.

I was so light-headed as I was yelling for someone to call 911 and as I am corralling my 8 year old who is melting down while holding my 5 year old’s face closed and calming him down. I called my husband and told him to get to us ASAP. A nurse/grandmother jumped in and helped me with ice and assessing the injury. I had her hold down the fort while I tested my BG to make sure the light-headedness for me was just freaking out and not my blood sugar (I was 140).

The sh!t of it is, if my husband didn’t get there as fast as he did, the ambulance wouldn’t take us if I had both kids with me. They wouldn’t assume the liability. So my choices were to take the kids myself to the hospital…or? Leave 8 year old with a stranger? WTH?

Seven hours and six stitches later, it is a birthday to remember. I was grateful for being a pumper in this instance bc it helped me navigate the hospital sedentariness and stress spike much better. Poor kid is in tears about anyone ever seeing him this way. He wants to hide in the house until the stitches are gone. Happy birthday, kid!

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Well that is quite a birthday! Kids are amazing at being able to hurt themselves at just the wrong time for the stupidest reasons. Hopefully, the stitches come out soon.

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Oh my goodness!!! They’ll remember that one forever…

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Just got the second spontaneous Pod Scream of Death within 10 days. This pod had 18 hours of use and the site looked fine.

I pulled a pod from a different Lot number and will try that. Maybe it’s a bad Lot?

What was the error code number?

19-00000-00051-052

6/9/18 code was 19-04058-07451-105

None of them are occlusions, but since they are different errors, the timing of it might just be an unhappy coincidence.

I think @ClaudnDaye had a few that went bad all at once a while back.

I have had a few in a box that went bad, but the rest were okay. So in general, I think things like this are often times a coincidence and not a bad lot.

But…Insulet will gladly swap out the remaining pods in the box for you if you want. It’s up to you. If you think the box is bad, call them and they will swap for you.

Personally, for me if it was 2 in 10 days, I’d stick with the box and see what happens on the next pod.

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Yes. We had five pod failures until we got smart and called it in. They replaced the entire box. Whole boxes of bad pods is a real thing.

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@Eric and @ClaudnDaye, will do!

Both errors apparently meant that the pod’s safety check deemed there to be a delivery interruption and shut them down. Swapping out the last three pods of that box with them.

I shoulda mentioned this. There is a thread with alarm explanations.

The first part - the 19 - means pod error.

And 052 means static.

omnipod-alarm-explanations

That’s weird. The Insulet lady said she was hoping it was something interesting like static, but that both alarms meant the same thing despite different numbers and it just meant interrupted insulin discovered during a routine pod safety check. She was baffled by it. I wonder why that doesn’t match up…on her end or what. Thanks for the direction to the thread. I didn’t think to search for that.

Meal injections are a beautiful thing. I successfully picked up Humalog pens today because I prefer them to syringe draws for injections. Doctors office did not call in the Junior Kwikpens with half units as I requested, but whole units are fine for my purposes. I wish I could meal bolus through my pods but it just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me.

I feel like I can actually eat real meals of real people sizes again and not eat most every meal slowly over the course of four hours which is insane.

Injections work faster for me too!

But get feisty with your endo! Those 1/2 unit increments are useful. Remember, your endo works for you. You are paying them. :rage:

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Gary Scheiner said my endo’s office gave the WORST patient care he’s ever seen…and that was back when I was with the good endo in the office before he retired! :grinning:

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Can the pharmacy just give you penfill cartridges instead and you can use a reusable HD pen?