Third Pod Scream of Death in Four Weeks

Tips, Tech & Gear
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I’ve just had the third Omnipod Pod Scream of Death in four weeks.

Admittedly, I’m using my oldest stock of pods which are marked as expiring March 8, 2019. Every failure alarm has been noted as “interruption of insulin delivery”. The sites themselves have all looked fine. They have each had a tiny speck of blood that have come out after I remove the pod/cannula. But I pretty much always have a drop of blood at cannula removal time. So that’s not unusual for me. Not sure if it is unusual for anyone else?

The first pod was on my left arm. The second pod was on my left upper butt (and I know it had accidentally gotten slept on and knocked getting in and out of my car). The one today was on my right thigh. It’s my first time trying my thigh for pods. I had 20 hours on that pod and had finished taking my dog on a long walk about an hour before it failed. Maybe the extra movement killed it? I took all of my boluses via injection today, so the only thing my pod did was handle basal and a single 1 unit correction dose before lunch.

I have now applied a pod from my next newest batch of pods (expires June 2019) also on my right thigh. My thigh is lean…as is all of my real estate. So maybe that just isn’t a good spot. Or maybe the older pods are the issue. If I can deduce anything, I’ll post follow ups here. Any input is welcome.

[These sorts of things do make me wonder about going back to MDI. But I’m not real interested in that due to loving my variable basal profiles and ability to scale them up and down for resistance.]

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What’s your total daily basal? I am betting it’s low enough that you could customize your basal pretty well with Levemir.

If your Levemir dose is low, it does not last as long. So you could essentially adjust it up or down, probably about every 8 hours.

Obviously not as granular as your pump, which is every 30 minutes, but still pretty good.

The downsides to MDI and Levemir is that you can’t shut it off. So whatever you have, you have it for 8-12 hours (give or take a few hours, depending on dosage level). And you have to remember it.

But the plus sides are that there is not really the same incidents of bad sites, and there is never an equipment failure.

Not sure what you did before pump, but if you didn’t try multiple daily doses of Levemir, it’s worth considering. It’s not a bad way to go.

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Thanks, @Eric.

I only ever used Lantus once daily at 9:30pm before pumping. I’ve never tried Levemir.

My current basal is 9.55 total on Weekends and 9.95 total on Work Days.

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Well, to know about how long it would last, you need to divide your basal amount by weight in kilograms. Make sure you convert to kilograms.

I know better than to ask women what they weigh, so you do the math.

But it’s a pretty safe guess to say your duration would be somewhat short, like between 6 and 12 hours. That’s a pretty good way to be able to adjust basal with MDI.

The once-a-day lantus thing is pretty lousy compared to what you can do with multiple and varied Levemir injections.

Rather than pasting all the durations again, check out this post:

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One other thing, it’s kind of a general range, so if you are at 0.18, you would be close to 12 hours, but maybe more like 10 or 11 hours.

So if you calculate it, that table kind of gives you an idea of close to where you would land.

And what the heck, I’ll paste it here for easy reference.

Dosage amount (units / kilogram) Average duration
0.1 units/kg 5.7 hours
0.2 units/kg 12.1 hours
0.4 units/kg 19.9 hours
0.8 units/kg 22.7 hours
1.6 units/kg 23.2 hours
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136 pounds, so 61.7 kg…so TDD of 9.55 is .15 units/kg. But I’m assuming Levemir would be in whole units?

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You can do Levemir in half units.

You can do ANY insulin in any fraction of units if you want to. No matter what an endo or pharmacy might say. :wink:

But with Levi it’s easy to do halfs.

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So with it lasting 9-ish hours based on the chart, what would a starting plan be, in your opinion?

I’m going to try my newer pods…but if that doesn’t pan out I’d consider giving Levemir a try. With your help. :slight_smile::slight_smile: Please.

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Pods come and go. Old pods might not work. Sometimes new ones don’t work. Sometimes sites are good, sometimes they are bad.

I’d suggest basing your decision on which is more consistent and flexible for you.

If you wanna shoot Levi, we can walk through it all.

DN loved her Levi. If she wasn’t such a pump junky, and loved to read user manuals so much, she’d still be doing Levi.

Ask her what she thinks about it. But please wait until tomorrow. She has business to take care of.

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Point of confusion here. Is “Dosage amount” in the table the amount in a single injection, or is it the total daily dose? Allison did the arithmetic with “Dosage amount” as TDD.

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Yeah…having never split doses before, I have no idea how any of that works. Thanks for highlighting this for more discussion! :+1: