At TCOYD in April I talked with the Omnipod rep, saw how it works, asked a few more questions, paused about 30 seconds for some mental processing, and signed the forms authorizing the insurance paperwork. I considered other pumps but “tubeless” edged out “better interface/other features” every time I mulled this over. So everything has fallen into place and I go to training on Friday!!
I’ve read the manual (twice!), done the online pre-training, and started a list of questions for the trainer. I’d sure love to hear from other members any suggestions for smoothing out the transition from MDIs to pumping. Thanks!
Don’t let pod errors frustrate you or make you stop using them. Although we do get pod errors, it’s maybe once per month and they replace the pod. If you really want to lose no money and you need to keep all the insulin you can get your hands on, you can extract the insulin from the failed pod.
I don’t actually do it. Because we use so little insulin in the first place (the minimum to make it function - 85 units which is more than enough for 3 days for Liam), and because we have a hard time going through a vial every 28 days anyway for our son, we just dispose of it. It would make sense, though to keep them in separate vials if you do keep it since you wouldn’t want to mix old with new insulin. What we did a few times (before we discontinued keeping the old pod insulin) was to extract the insulin from the old and insert it directly into the new pod. Then pull more from the vial and insert enough to make it beep (once it reaches the minimum threshold of 85 units). As you know, though, it takes up to 200 units.
I would strongly recommend going through the PDM setup by yourself a few times (you can reset it back to factory “blank” when you are done, before you go in for training). Sometimes the trainers are kind of “grabby”, they take the PDM from you and do all the button pushing, rather than letting you do it.
Also, come up with what you “think” would be good settings for your basal, the different hours, morning, noon, evening, night. The trainer will always start you on less so that you don’t go low, but you should come up with what you think is right beforehand.
You can still use their recommendations if you want, but you know they are just guessing, and your guess would probably be better than their guess, right?! After all, you are the only one who has ever been in your body.
I started using mine before training, which kinda cranks the trainers a bit, but if you are feeling bold - do it! That makes you more knowledgeable and you’ll have better questions for your training.
And in line with what @Eric is saying, make sure you test out all the cool functionalities that the Pod PDM provides…extended bolus, temp basal programs, etc., They’re all really useful and things that you can’t do on MDI.
All my supplies were sent to the clinic or I sure would! Knowing the trainer, I think she will want me to do it myself (and she knows I pretty good with tech stuff). Some of my questions concern variable rates for stuff like I:C (e.g., morning insulin resistance) but I hadn’t thought of working out my own rates. I will definitely work on that.
One of the problems with the omnipod setup is that you can’t pick different ICs and different correction rates for different times of the day. You have to go through the menu and reset them if you want them changed from morning to night.
Don’t be afraid of doing the setup on your own after your training. Make sure you understand all the numbers. Ask if you need to, I’ve done it tons of times.
So…a couple glasses of wine at dinner often mean I can trend low in the morning. On MDIs, I just give less rapid insulin for breakfast. What adjustments will I need to make as a pumper? Not that I’ll be having any beverages the first couple of weeks after I make the switch.
Have you thought about switching your prescription to pens? We did that, and even though pen vials are more expensive per unit, we wind up keeping two unopened vials every month because Samson simply doesn’t use that much insulin. Better than tossing out 3/4 of a bottle of Novolog, which always made me feel guilty.
We’re creating quite a stockpile.
Yes you can. I have 4 different I:C profiles set up right now for different times of the day. Also, you can set up different CF’s as well. We have 3 CF profiles set up atm.
Oh, right! I was thinking of the correction factor for different BG levels. Like you can’t have a different correction settings for 150-200, 200-250, 250-300, etc. But times you can. Sorry!
We are at the point now where we’re right at the cusp of using an entire vial each 28 days. Some months we actually have to open up a new vial (when we have more than one POD error in that month.) We have a lot of insulin piling up also - we just have it in vial version. We get 9 vials in each of our prescription pick-ups and we have 2 full unopened bags (9 vials in each) that we’ve not opened as we’re still in the previous stock still. We’re almost due for another prescription pick-up which will yield us 9 more vials. At this point, we’re just doing FIFO and letting them stockpile
For Liam, we have the following Correction factors set up:
From 12AM - 7AM, it’s set to 300 (he drops easily during the night so it’s set high on purpose.)
From 7AM - 10PM, it’s set to 225.
From 10PM - 12AM, it’s set to 200.
Does OmniPod waste a lot of insulin? Because we use less than half each month, but from my understanding, each of our kids is using about the same amount of insulin per month.
There is a minimum requirement for filling the POD…85 units. The POD lasts for only 3 days. On the most insulin-intense day, he may use 9 units. That means, every 3 days, he’s using under 30 units. This means 50 units are wasted. I could extract it and re-use it, but I don’t at this time …but I may once his insulin requirements start to increase.
Each vial has 10mL (100 units per mL), so 1,000 units. We use minimum ever 3 days of 85 units.
85 units per fillup * 9 fillups in 28 days = 765 units. If he has more than a couple POD errors, we empty the vial each month.
What I meant was correction factor for the amount of insulin needed for different BG ranges, not times of the day.
For example, maybe 1 unit brings you down 50 points when you are at 200, but if you are over 300, that same 1 unit would only bring you down 30 points. Your body becomes more insulin resistant as you are higher.
Do you noticed anything like that? I am not sure if that is a commonly understood thing, because I have been asked what my correction factor is, and I tell them “it depends on how high I am”, they get confused.
Hopefully I am making sense. We need a confused emoji.
This is subjective to the user. For someone Liam’s size and insulin requirement, yes…it wastes insulin. I’m sure when he gets older and his insulin requirements increase he’ll need even more than 85 units (closer to the 200 units max) and some people only get 1 to 2 days use out of the FULL reservoir (200 units). So, it’s really based on the individual using the POD and their insulin requirements.
They don’t make “mini-PODs” for the babies/toddlers with less insulin requirements…but I wish they did!!
Wow! Never realized this. Samson’s pump site needs to be changed every 3 days but you can reuse the reservoir insulin. We usually fill it up with about 100 units and use it for about 6 or 7 days.
