My daughter started the minimed last night. At midnight we had to change the site because she had a BG of 450. After taking out the set, we saw the cannula was bent. My question to everyone is, does anyone use a quick set and insert it themselves without the inserter "mushroom" thing. My daughter wants nothing to do with the inserter and is inserting manually but I'm nervous the cannula will always bend. Any suggestions, advice, personal experiences on this. The trainor thought the silhouette might be better for an active child. Ryan is 9 years old.
I really like the Sure-T sets. They use a thin metal needle, which is always inserted manually. The main reason I prefer the Sure-T is that if the site hurts, at least reasonably soon after inserting you can move the needle without changing the whole set. They do have to be changed every other day. Possibly Medtronics would send you some sample of them and silhouettes.
I don’t have a child with diabetes but I am a Type 1. I am a very thin person and have been using the silhouette set with the 13mm cannula. I think with the quick set you need to make sure you insert them into an area with a good amount of fatty tissue beneath it. Although I haven’t tried the quick set my doc has been concerned this happening more frequently and with the shorter quick set that the possibility of it pulling out was a lot easier.
You could call Minimed and ask them for a sample pack and fry the different ones that they offer. For me personally, I have only a few instances in 7 years where I have had a cannula kink up and it was usually due to being hit directly in the site.
Good luck!!
Lol. I said fry…I meant try. 
Hi Renee,
I use the quicksets and I don’t use the inserter device. For some reason, that thing kind of freaked me out, so I just started out manually inserting them, and never looked back. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it soon enough.
One thing to note is that sometimes the cannula is bent when you take it out even when it’s working just fine. Other times, the cannula will be perfectly straight and it will give a “no delivery” alarm. The important thing is to monitor BG’s and take action if something is wrong. You did the right thing to take the set out and put in a new one when you saw that Ryan’s numbers were too high. Don’t forget also that an injection is always an option if you’re not sure. Just because he’s on the pump now doesn’t mean that he can’t take a shot if something is weird or not working with the pump.
Trust me, you’ll love pumping in no time. The first two weeks are by far the hardest.
i got on the pump when i was about 29 or 30. what happend to your baby happend to me however; ended up going into dka because i had nooooo idea that it was that. i had a lot of stress in my life at the time so i thought i got sick due to that. come to find out when the cathater was removed, it was just bent onto my skin and i wasnt getting any insulin. needless to say, im not on the pump anymore. didnt like it at all. plus the inserter hurts to use it.
Hi, Renee. I’m probably being repetitious here, but I hope you ask minimed for some samples of other sets, especially the Sure-T, before you give up on their pump. I’m on the 522 part time, and do so much better on pump days than MDI days. (After many years on a pump I have some absorption issues, which are handled quite well on this part time regimen.) Part of the problem is that I’m thin, which the Sure-T handles better than other types of sets that I’ve tried.
I called Medtronic about a half hour agao and they are sending me 4 sure-t’s and 4 mios. I know she won’t like the mios after I saw them on-line. I hope she likes the sure-t and I hope they work for her. She is on the OmniPod right now. She doesn’t like the way it inserts the cannula. The clicking, the variable time of insertion. She hates it. Hence the switch. I may try the quick set again. I have enough of them to at least try them maybe in a different spot. Thanks for the advice.
I like the inserter, and it has happened to me a couple of times, and this is why it happens: If the adhesive grabs ahold of the inside of the inserter tool the inserter it will not follow the needle in properly, or if the inserter is not held against the body snugly then it will not properly insert either.
It happens once in a while, but once you get the hang of it she will notice that it didn’t insert properly. Nothing is perfect, but the tool does make it easier to get a solid connection.
I only use the inserter. Have had only one bent cannula since going on pump. I am switching between the Mio and Quicksets until I decide which one is the one I will stay with. By all means try to talk your daughter into using the inserter. It doesn’t hurt.
Renee- welcome to the pump family 
My son Logan is 8 and we started the mm paradigm pump in May. We use the quick sets with the “mushroom” looking inserter. I have had 1 instance with a bent canula and they believe it was because Logan tensed up when we were setting the site. I have only had that problem once, and we were told to use the inserter device to keep the canula from bending, but as you may see everyone gets different advice. We tried the silhouettes and they did not work for us. Logan said it hurt worse during insertion because they go in on an angle and are a bit longer. Also I found that unlike the quick sets you can snap the plasict over the needle, on the silhouette you can’t. I think the inserter also hurts less. ( I did a test run before we started the pump with Logan because I wanted to know what I was going to put my son through and the inserter hurt a lot less. With manual insertion people just have a tendancy to hesitate or go very slowly with setting the site.Push a button and its done