About a year ago I wrote a post entitled “From Animas to Omnipod - feedback after one month”. That post started with “After having been on the Animas Vibe for 3 years I had to start thinking about what would be next; the Omnipod, the Medtronic 630g (or maybe the t:slim X2 if it gets approved in Canada in 2018).”
How time flies! Well the t:slim X2 was recently approved and my Animas warranty just expired, so I am now free to purchase another pump via insurance. What to do…?
I absolutely love my Omnipod and being tubeless. The things that I did not like about the Omnipod in my original post are a thing of the past - it’s amazing how quickly we adapt to things. I love that Tidepool/Loop with be partnering with Insulet in the future, but what I don’t like is the time we will have to wait until we see something new from Insulet.
From what I have heard, the approval by Health Canada of the Dexcom G6 and then basal IQ will not be too far off. It would be very nice to have that predictive low suspend overnight, but I am not sure that I want to have the tubing back. I have also seen a lot of posts about occlusions with the t:slim, but I realize that a lot of what gets posted are complaints and that those complaints may be a small percentage of users.
Is anyone else thinking about making this switch? Has anyone already switched from Omnipod to t:slim X2 and is using basal IQ? Was it worth switching?
We must be on a Lisa wavelength today. I’ve been debating this same question the last few weeks. I’m happy with the Omnipod but am always looking for new opportunities!
@Beacher I like the way you think. It’s true, I lived 41 years as a T1D without a pump, so I guess another few of years waiting for new tech that sounds amazing won’t be so bad.
When I think about the t:slim I keep remembering what it was like to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night with my Vibe, and what it was like trying on pants when I went shopping.
@Millz, great minds think alike! I did have a Tandem rep come to my house a couple of weeks ago and the pump in the case hanging on my pocket did not excite me. I keep thinking about automatic suspends overnight though…
My favorite saying is, “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.” We love Omnipod and short a fully functional closed-loop system or a cure for Diabetes (or Liam wanting to take a pump break and go MDI temporarily) I don’t think we’ll ever switch to anything else. We just can’t imagine tubing after being tubeless and enjoying the freedom that brings with it.
I always wonder if these things just don’t bother me, or if I disconnect more than other people? When I’m trying on new clothes (or changing clothes in general), I just disconnect the pump. I think I kept it connected my first day of pumping, couldn’t stand the annoyance of having to fiddle with the tubing, and have disconnected ever since.
For the bathroom, I just temporarily clip the pump to my shirt and then move it back to my pants/pocket when I’m done.
But to get a bit more on-topic, I’m using an Animas pump right now and plan to switch to the t:slim in the near future. I think I might wait for Basal-IQ to come along, but am not sure yet. I think that feature would make a major, major difference in my life (right now every afternoon my commute home makes me low, so I end up suspending my pump manually and/or treating a low, or both…not having to deal with that as well as middle-of-the-night lows that I experience regularly would be amazing!).
i went from a 630G Medtronic to the Omnipod at the suggestion of the JuiceBox Podcast and after being on it for a little over a month, I’M HOOKED! I love that it is tubeless!
I currently have UHC which right now won’t let us use anything other than medtronic or omnipod supplies. I have 2 years to go on my 630G warranty, so if that gets lifted and the Tslim X2 becomes available, I MAY go back to tubes, but am torn. A lot can happen in 2 years though. I really like the idea of suspend on low and could really use this! And I’m hooked on Dexcom G6, so refuse to use the equivalent Medtronic the 670.
Maybe by then they will make an equivalent suspend on low for Omnipod? Anyone heard of this down the road?
It doesn’t bother my son at all. Thanks to some awesome forum members, we have tried the Omnipods, and didn’t find them to our liking. My son loves his T:Slim and Basal-IQ is better than I would have ever thought possible.
My son just uses a pump band and never deals with pockets or other things. Unclipping is easy if needed, but with a pump band, he doesn’t have very many reasons to do it.
Since the pumping community of FUD is somewhat dominated by pod people I thought I’d make a case for the t:slim
The basal IQ feature, first and foremost, is really awesome. I hate having to either stop what I’m doing during the day or wake up during the night to treat lows, and this feature greatly reduces that, I need to treat maybe 2 lows a week with actual carbs vs. like 2 a day (most of which I treated before they hit the low threshold, but still) before Basal IQ. I can also be more aggressive without fear while the Basal IQ is running. Doing stuff like setting my basals much higher at night (I often get difficult to predict spikes), giving pretty hefty extended boluses for meals I’m not sure about, giving a correction right before bed, all sorts of stuff I’d be nervous to do otherwise.
I’m a big fan of the “Personal Profiles” thing on the t:slim also. Basically it combines all of the things that can be dependent on the time of day (basal rates, insulin to carb ratio, correction factor, target BG) and lets you create profiles for different scenarios. I never realized how irritating it was to have to navigate all around the menus on other pumps to adjust for a sudden change in insulin sensitivity until I could just handle everything all at once.
I also really liked the idea of the t:slim being “upgradeable” because it can be very frustrating to have to get a whole new pump to get whatever smart stuff they finally release.
The occlusion alarms are kind of annoying but I’ve found that they’re mostly false alarms. Unless I see something that suggests I actually have an occlusion or get another occlusion alarm in a short amount of time, I just hit “resume insulin” right away and nothing seems to go wrong. It seems to me that if the tubing gets “kinked” in some way that can sometimes trigger the occlusion alarm. I get an occlusion alarm mayyyybe once every 2 weeks.
I’ll end this by saying that if tubeless is a big priority to you then you’re probably better off with the Omnipod. I’ve been pumping for 16 years and 0 of them have been tubeless, I am quite unbothered by the tubing. I really didn’t consider the Omnipod as an option because my top priority was the predictive suspend/integration with Dexcom, which Omnipod probably won’t have for a while. There’s a whole host of other reasons I’ve never been interested in the Omnipod but I won’t bore you with those since I know you like it
@Jen when I was on the Animas Vibe I loved it. I was so sad when Animas went out of business. The tubing didn’t bother me at all and after a short time I didn’t even notice that it was there - it was just part of me.
Now that I am using the Omnipod I realize how freeing it is to not have the tubing, but I would go back to the tubing if I decided that some new functionality would be very important to me. I may also wait until basal IQ and the G6 are approved. Maybe by then there will be more news on where Insulet is with their new stuff. Right now the t:slim with the G5 would not give me any additional functionality.
@glitzabetes thank you for your input. I know that I would love the basal IQ feature. I like to keep my BGs on the low end and I often get woken up overnight for low alerts. I would love to solve that problem and get more uninterrupted sleeps.
I am sure that the occlusion alarms are just an idiosyncrasy of the t:slim. All pumps have their issues and we just get used to the ones we have to deal with.
That’s the problem - I am not sure how big of a priority tubeless is for me. When I was using my Animas Vibe the tubing never bothered me, but now that I am tubeless I love it. Anyway, I have some time to think about it because the G6 and basal IQ are not approved in Canada yet.
Yes @Thomas, the source was a Canadian sales rep. Maybe wishful thinking on their part?
It’s good to hear that you are liking basal IQ. It’s something to look forward to if I decide to go with the t:slim.
Thanks everyone for your input. I am still undecided, but I have more points to think about. If anyone makes the switch in the meantime (@Millz?) let me know!
I wore the t:slim for a couple years before starting LOOP and I think I got only 1 occlusion during that entire time. So it’s not a universal problem. I haven’t seen any actual data on how widespread occlusions are on the t:slim.
I stayed on MDI for several years before starting pumping because I was pretty sure I’d hate the tube, but when I actually got a pump (to solve the dawn phenomenon) even from the first day of pumping I really didn’t notice the tubing. For me it’s just not an issue.
