If I rest the Tandem on a table beside the tub, can it stay attached to me with the tube stretching from my site (submerged) to the pump (placed next to the tub)? I love baths, but can’t relax when I have to unplug because I feel like I’m on a time limit to plug back in. Miss the ease of this with the Omnipod.
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1m submersion is a 10% increase in pressure. Pressure differences may impact the ability of the pump to deliver insulin; normally it pumps into an area of the same pressure, pumping to an extra few % is pumping uphill. The pump wasn’t designed for that. Talk to Tandem; even small amounts of submersion introduce very large pressure differences so far as the engineers are concerned.
The disconnect stops the pump having to deal with that; I don’t know how it works (I’ve only every used an Omnipod) but I assume it squirts insulin into the air and feels fine. Putting pressure on it will be the issue.
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This should be fine. You can also do small bolus equal to missed basal, if longer bath, without worry of tubing. Just disconnect after bolus, and cap the infusion site.
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Yes, this is completely fine. I do the same with our whirlpool tub! Interestingly when my CGM transmitter is underwater, sometimes my phone will pick up the signal but my Dexcom won’t (or vice versa) even though they sit next to each other next to the tub!
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OP wasn’t going to put her pump in the tub, so this isn’t really relevant.
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Other way round; if @beans_betes put the pump in the water at about the same level as the catheter there would be no pressure differential. It’s leaving the pump out that can cause problems, although the catheter tube length obviously limits the pressure differential and Tandem may well be fine with anything below 10% (corresponding to a 1m long catheter tube.)
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Water attenuates the bluetooth/wifi signal a lot; this is why my G6 frequently fails when I sleep, because the phone is on the bedstand and the transmitter is on the other side of my body, so the signal has to go through 15cm or so of water or bounce off the walls. Failures tend to be intermittent and probably depend on how deep you were immersed (or rather your transmitter was immersed) at the moment the particular device tried to communicate with the transmitter (I don’t think they share the communication.)
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I think it’s unlikely that someone’s infusion site is going to be submerged 1 m when they’re sitting in a bathtub. 1 meter down from the shoulders will be somewhere on the calves or lower thighs in tall people, where very few people put their tubed infusion sites, and most bathtubs aren’t nearly that deep anyway.
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This is why I used 1m as an upper limit. I certainly don’t keep my body (any part of it) above water while using a bath tub. 1m is also convenient for questions to manufacturers; it’s about 1.5psi, Tandem presumably know what pressure difference triggers their occlusion detection.
The same question applies to spa pools and swimming pools, particularly the former, where disconnecting the pump while chugging down margaritas would be inconvenient. Your point about head to canula distance deals with that. Swimming pools are less convenient, but the tube length handles that; even with the pump underwater the tube length places an absolute limit on the maximum pressure difference.