PDM dropped in water

Type 1 & LADA
1

Hi everyone!

I accidentally dropped my Omnipod pdm in water and now it won’t switch on. Insulet is quoting me $199 but it was flashing before and I’m still hoping it will turn on. Does anyone have any experience/advice on what to do in this situation so I don’t have to pay for a new PDM! Seriously panicking rn!!

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From the User Guide:

If the PDM becomes submerged in water
The PDM is not waterproof. Do not place it in water or leave it near water where it can accidentally fall in. If it becomes submerged in water:

  1. Dry the outside of the PDM with a clean, lint-free cloth.
  2. Open the battery compartment; remove the batteries and discard them.
  3. Use a clean, lint-free cloth to gently absorb any water in the battery compartment.
  4. Leave the battery compartment door open until the PDM is thoroughly dry.
  5. Do not put in fresh batteries or attempt to use the PDM until it has thoroughly air-dried.

:warning:Never use a blow dryer or hot air to dry the Pod or PDM. Extreme heat can damage the electronics.

Good luck! Let us know how it turns out.

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The other trick with wet electronics (after you wipe the excess water off) is to put it in a container with rice or silica gel packets. That will pull the remaining moisture out.

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Actually there are better options than rice, which did the worst job in one experiment.

Test 2: Is rice king?

The Experiment

We wanted to see if rice is really all it’s cracked up to be. We tested six common household materials to see which could absorb the most water from a wet sponge in 24 hours:

Cat litter
Couscous (pearl)
Classic rolled oatmeal
Instant oatmeal
Instant rice
Silica gel (crystal kitty litter)
Uncooked rice

Rice is most definitely not king

Dry, uncooked conventional rice was the worst of the seven options we tested. It absorbed the least water in 24 hours, losing out to silica gel, cat litter, couscous, instant oatmeal, classic oatmeal and instant rice.

More importantly, the sponge that we left in open air performed far better than any of the drying agents. It’s possible that the absorbent materials could have matched open air if we’d used a lot more. But it seems that leaving your phone on a shelf may be the best option.

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hi everyone, thanks for your help! I got my PDM back up and running by dabbing off the water, shaking it out a bit, leaving it under the fan to dry for 2 hours and then in rice for a bit (wouldn’t recommend bc some rice got stuck inside :/) and then put fresh batteries in and did a hard reset by pushing a paperclip into the motherboard at the bottom and it went back on. Had to reset it once more bc it was in PDM error mode and deactivated my current pod, bg + bolus calcs aren’t available for a couple of hours but everything else seems to be ok for now!

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@ibs97 - that is great news.

@beacher - I just learned something about rice :slight_smile: I just use silica gel packets when this happens to me. Now I have an arsenal of drying things.

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Careful … you don’t want to give people the idea that diabetics smell like damp cat litter.

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