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

I’m optimistic I may be headed towards sustainable improved bg. I’m eating, I’m happy, I’m not nervous. All pretty stellar changes from where I started when joining FUD. Not being scared anymore is a huge quality of life improvement for me.

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That sounds great! The last few weeks you have only been using Novo, right?

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Yes. Two weeks as of today.

Injections of Novolog look the same as injections of Humalog. My cannula sites on my arms do look less red in the immediate perimeter around the cannula on Novolog. My alternate sites have bled from movement but still worked just fine (for my purposes).

I’ve ditched the bolus calculator. I don’t give it a chance to even try to help. I’ll enter that I’m eating 1g of carb so that I can extend my boluses if I need to in a situation, but otherwise I just do my own thing. I inject anything more than 3 units. I use my pod for basal/nudges/small snack boluses/corrections/the extended part of extended boluses. I went to my old breakfast routine. I’m dosing more for lunch on work days which was absolutely revolutionary today. I believe I see greater stability in Novolog for standing up to my hormone changes…but that obviously is going to require more watchful waiting. But I noticed that when I tried Novolog last year, as well.

So in answer to your one question, have two paragraphs!! (It’s hard to tell that I’m excited, isn’t it?)

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I know @Chris feels that sometime FUD skews towards negative experiences, so I’ll try to couch all of my “challenges” as positively as possible:

  1. Jury is still out as to how the newer G5 transmitter will do for me. I will say that since I started it 20 hours ago, it is presenting less noisy data, and all fingersticks have been within 20% of what the Dexcom has displayed.
  2. I got to harvest Novolog out of my 18 hour old pod that spontaneously failed with the delightful death scream (error indicates interrupted insulin delivery) in order to conserve my supply. It failed right before it was time to go do school pickup. At least I’d taken my lunch bolus (5 units) via injection, so I know it wasn’t due to a large bolus. One less variable to track.
  3. My husband is bewildered by how much technology has been adding challenges lately.

Keep on truckin’, that’s what I’m going for.

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So is mine. But we agree it’s a necessary evil for optimal management. He was recently making sympathetic noises when I complained my fingers were hurting from the number of fingersticks I was doing, but I said I remember putting drops of water and urine in a test tube and waiting for the tablet to bubble up so this is a vast improvement so enough bitchin’.

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Agreed.

I’m personally starting to aim higher than I was before and that seems to be working better for me. I’m having enough technical difficulties that trying to shoot for the moon is just causing unnecessary whiplash right now. And over-controlling it is doing me exactly no favors. So I’m deciding what I want to eat, dosing my best guess, and just leaving it alone for three to four hours. I can feel my sanity returning. Ain’t no surfing happening for me right now. And that’s not a bad thing at the moment.

Aiming higher for me is leading to more consistent results…which I personally believe (without scientific references) is going to be better for me in the long run than a lower A1C with ridiculous dips and spikes.

And I’m relearning everything right now with Novolog…so going back to basics, trying to ignore a lot of things in the meantime and just reset.

Running my own race here.

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Despite plenty of technical issues the last two weeks, things are getting better on a macro scale. Dexcom has been accurate so I’m inclined to believe the Sugarmate data more or less. Work in progress…but it’s Progress. :blush::blush: FUD is awesome.

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I’ve been doing a hybrid of pumping and MDI for about two weeks. I’m going exclusively to shots for boluses now. So that’s an Omnipod for basal plus 5 injections a day for eating. :grimacing::grimacing:

I really like my results so far. I think that either (1) my skin is not well suited for the Omnipod style of cannula (and I’ve never pumped with anything else so who knows if a different style of cannula/angle would work better) or (2) my skin is not well suited for getting all of my insulin in one spot for days on end. I imagine my pod sites are like an uninflated balloon…and each bolus is like blowing up the balloon and then letting it deflate. The elasticity just gets worn out. If I just pump my basal, my site seems to keep working…knock on wood.

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There are many different cannula types once you move away from the Pod. That is one of the advantages, our healthcare providers will give us 5-6 of any cannula type we want just to try. We have tried most of the ones on the market and feel that is a good advantage to have in a tubed pump.

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