I have been using the Ominipod since August and have very little problems until this week.
On Tuesday I went into my Endo and we did some adjustments to my basal insulin program to cover parts of the day/night where I am consistently going higher than desired. That is working great, my sugars are staying low and steady EXCEPT for whatever reason my pods are now failing DAILY. I have had an occlusion one morning and every other morning I have had leaks where the cannula is apparently no longer inserted into my skin so the insulin is leaking out into the adhesive instead of into my body.
I woke up this morning and thought I got off lucky for the day and nothing was leaking though there was some blood on the adhesive. I get to work, look at my CGM readout on my phone and my blood sugar is rather high. I verify with a fingerpoke and then set up a bolus. Immediately the reek of insulin hits my nose so I check, and yep, leaking Omnipod!
I grab my spare pod I keep in my desk, remove the old one, and draw insulin out of it. I try to fill up the new pod enough to get me through the next 8 hours but there’s so little insulin it doesn’t even detect it. It’s been a day already and its not even 9am.
Could these pod failures/leaks be caused by the new basal programs somehow?
I went from 1.9 Units per hour from 6:30am to 2:30am and 2.4 units per hour from 2:30 to 6:30 am to a more complicated basal program of 12:00am to 2:30am 2.00 u/hr, 2:30am to 6:00am 2.5 u/hr, 6:00am to 3:00pm 2.0 u/hr, and 3:00pm to 12:00AM 1.9u/hr.
I contacted omnipod via email yesterday but haven’t heard back just yet. I’m just so frustrated to have to deal with this every single morning. If I didn’t already have a sugar headache I would have a headache from irritation.
So sorry to hear of the pod failures you are experiencing. I don’t believe changing basal would cause this though. I frequently change my basal on the pod w/out issue. I do experience pod failures from time to time, but it usually beeps, and then I’m able to change it. Where are you placing the pod? I usually place my on my abdomen which has good absorption and not likely to get hit or knocked. Recently I started using back of upper arm and noticed it has terrible absorption. I’ve had to double my basal in fact and still make corrections. So I’d say check your pod placement. Compare absorption. Make sure the pod is not getting moved or shoved. Good luck.
Many of us make many changes to our basal programs often. We do here at home. So I am sure that the basal program change itself is not connected to your pod problems.
Your repeated insulin leaks: did you change the general locations of your pod? Did you make any changes to your installation procedure? It seems that your pod is getting displaced during the night, so that when you wake up the canula has come off.
Some ideas:
around FUD we have discussed many times possible installation tips. One of them is to pinch the flesh around the pod while pressing down on the canula side while insertion is going on. This may be a good thing to try?
we also use a liquid adhesive under our CGM (as well as an over-the-adhesive adhesive). If you get pod slippage, why don’t you use some skintac on the skin prior to installing your pod? It might be a good idea to draw a small circle on your skin with a pen where the cnula will be, so that you don’t skintac the area.
If you are using the arm for your pod location, using some an armband around it at night might help keep it from slipping (such as this for instance).
With us, pod failures come in series of two or three. Hopefully, you will reach the end of yours soon!
I am sure you know that, if you call Insulet for each failure, they will send another back: it has never failed for us. They are expensive enough so it is worth calling for them
You should call the support number to get the pods replaced, if nothing else. You might not hear back from email, but the support number will always replace the pods.
I have had this problem before and it was just a bad batch of PODs. I called Omnipod and they just replaced all the boxes with the lot number I had a problem with.
I have been using the Pods for close to 2.5 years and there were about 2 bad batches in that time. Omnipod was great in replacing these.
EDIT - I usually call omnipod and they will overnight PODs if you have a problem like this.
My feeling is it was an adhesive problem but I will never really know.
Thank you for the advice! I did contact Omnipod and they told me to stop using the pods from the box the bunch were from. The ones out of the next box haven’t given me any trouble. I have started using an extra adhesive and moved my pod sites to be a bit more protected by my body at night. I’m definitely a tosser and turner at night so I wouldn’t be surprised if I was ripping them partially off in my sleep. Omnipod sent out replacement pods and I’m returning my funky ones so they can see if something was going on with it or not.
Excellent! If you have a couple of bad ones in a row from a box, it is good to pull the plug early instead of living through the frustration of 10 bad ones.
