3rd pod, 3rd failure…I’m beginning to think this whole batch is bad. We put the new one on today after the previous one failed. Then tonight, his bg’s went up from 110 to 270 after food and bolus and after 2 hours we were wondering why he didn’t go down any and/or why he went up so much, so we gave a correction of .5 units and one hour later he was up to 290! So we called omnipod and they said we should remove the pod and put a new one on if it’s not bringing his BG level down.
I mean…can we get a f’ing break already? This is a 2 year old that already hates this entire process. Now we’re needing to change these out on him multiple times every day.
Damn that is frustrating. We’ve all seen how much you were relying on this thing to make your life a little easier and instead, at least right now, it’s making a very hard situation worse. It’s one thing to have a failure now and then, but this sort of thing can be worse than just irritating. My very first pump came with a batch of reservoirs that were eventually recalled, and man did I have problems before getting it all straightened out. Similarly I had repeated occlusion alarms with a Snap pump I tried (great little device but WAY too sensitive occlusion sensor); it was keeping me up nights on end and it just about had me weeping with something that went a lot deeper than ordinary frustration. You’re hoping for something that’s going to make a very difficult part of your life a little easier, and when it turns into the opposite… there are no words.
I would take some comfort in the huge numbers of people use the Omnipod and love it, particularly parents of T1s, am I right @rgcainmd? There’s every reason to be confident it’s going to work for you guys despite this rough start.
I’ve been through this before. It does go beyond ordinary frustration. If I were you @ClaudandDaye, I would try to get the help of a CDE or a Omnipod pump trainer for a live session to check your protocol. I agree with @DrBB, that the numbers of successful pod pumpers justifies further effort. Liam deserves a hero badge of a high order!
Are you still using his thighs? For some unclear reason, thighs just don’t work for some people. My daughter is one of them. About 75% of the time thigh sites simply don’t work. The very next Pod from the same lot placed elsewhere works like a charm.
ALSO: Has anyone educated you about “New Pod Syndrome”? Despite our best efforts to prime effectively (place the Pod upside down during the priming process, another less than widely known trick) the first dose (including the continuation of basal driplets) somehow gets lost in the transition. So we bolus anywhere from 0.1 to 0.5 units “extra” upon starting a new Pod. How much to use varies from person to person and even from time to time. The factors I consider when deciding how much “extra” include: current BG, directional arrow on the Dexcom, location of site, time of day, and time of the month, along with a large side of “gut feeling”.
It worked on him for two days on the second pod before it got an error. His current one, and the ones before are delivering insulin and bringing his numbers in line. We just need the pump to function for the full duration.
I’m trying my best to rationalize the failures as maybe beginner error. Maybe we just didn’t fill the posts right or something. We will give this more time and continue to improve our technique. We have faith that, in the long term this is going to be the very best decision. We just have to make it through the short term issues.
If the thighs continue resulting in pump failures we will definitely consider using a different area for the pods.
The recommendation was made to deliver a bolus anytime we install a new pod so that the site can be thoroughly saturated which will allow for better insulin absorption. Is this what you are referring too?
Even if thighs work well, you’re still looking at relatively small patches of real estate, especially with a toddler. I make sure my daughter rotates through as much real estate as possible to avoid lipoatrophy and -dystrophy. She’s clearly much larger than a 2-year-old, and TBH, I’d not feel comfortable with even very careful rotation around only one body part. Even though she rotates areas carefully on her tummy, upper bum, lower back, love handles, (not arms, as these are reserved for Dexcom sensors), and sometimes thighs (a real hit-or-miss with my muscular kid), I am so borderline obsessed with “the lipos” that I’m going to start encouraging her to add “the girls” (wonderful globes of insulin absorbing fatty tissue) to her square footage. I’m dead serious; some women routinely use their “girls” as pump sites. [Just remembered your son can’t utilize his “girls” unless his body resembles that of a sumo wrestler’s. One more reason to reconsider areas other than thighs.]
Yep, but I go one step further with that little “extra” dose because we routinely saw unexplainable highs (not rage-bolus-worthy highs, mind you, but higher than I like to see which is anything over 101) after Pod changes.
I am so very happy to hear you are not giving up on the OmniPod system. It does not function as effectively as we’d like about 4% of the time, but I believe no particular pump performs well 100% of the time. For my daughter, the OmniPod pump has ended up being the best thing since the invention of Skittles.
I fear “the lipos” nearly as much as I fear the Zombie Apocalypse, which is somewhere between “quite a little bit” and “pathological obsession”. (Likely closer to the “quite a little bit” end of the spectrum.)
I’ve heard tell of some folks actually running out of usable pump sites after years of poor site rotation. I’ve even heard of a rare few who found it difficult to even find tiny areas remaining that they could use for MDI.
I’m truly not meaning to be a fear mongerer. It’s just that this particular issue is something I’m hyper-aware of trying to avoid, as the thought of losing the ability to vary basal rates and set temporary basal rates (not to mention the ability to utilize an AP) that a pump provides concerns me greatly…
I think a lot of them were probably people diagnosed 40 years ago when syringes/pumps used much larger needles and infusion sets…
I was told to start avoiding my stomach this summer by a CDE, but absorption still works well there (in fact, better than most other areas on my body). And, weirdly, she said sensors were OK but pump sites were not, so it must be something about the insulin rather than the sites themselves.
Wow, I just read about Lipodystrophy and, being that he’s so young this is something we certainly have to be concerned with. If we “overuse” any body part and cause his fatty tissues to degenerate, this can render a site totally unusable. Since we have go to on the assumption this he may have T1 for the rest of his life…we certainly don’t want to have any part in causing this condition in him. Thank you so much for introducing this to us.
As a result, whether we like his thigh site or not, it would be irresponsible of to use to the thighs only due to this condition. As a result, I’ve created a diagram that we will begin using for his CGM / Pod rotations.
Thanks again for this information…before you told me this term, I had never heard of it before. I’m surprised Think like a Pancreas didn’t mention anything about it…if it did, it totally didn’t register.
Harold, I could be barking up the wrong tree (this has actually been known to happen, fortunately at a frequency only slightly higher than that at which Mt. St. Helens erupts ) but could your sweet little boy be inadvertently trying to rub or push this cyborg part off his thigh (a natural thing to do at his tender age) because it’s just so there (easily within his sight)? He could be doing this without your knowledge unless you and/or your wife keep your eyes glued on him 24/7 (which I believe would be all but impossible, especially in light of the sheer number of delightful offspring that your happy union has produced). Perhaps an upper bum/lower back Pod placement would be more effective in that Liam might be a little less aware of its constant presence? I realize that “the poop factor” may come more into play with these placements until potty training has been accomplished, but I thought it may be something worth reconsidering…
@Terry4’s method of painting Skin Tac on top of the adhesive may also make it stick much more firmly. (I’m almost a week into a new sensor, having tried this for the first time, and the adhesive isn’t even starting to peel!). The downside is that it may make getting the pods off much more difficult.
I think you are thinking the same thing I am thinking, Sam!
But I think that for some people, using a particular pump site for up to three days (or, G-d forbid and perish the thought, even longer) at even much smaller but continuous doses (as compared to larger single doses using MDI) essentially could “equate” to the same thing: over-usage of a particular spot. This is why I insist that my daughter change her pump site a minimum of every three days, even if there is some insulin remaining in her pump reservoir. Fortunately (I guess?) this is a non-issue these days, as a Pod cannot accommodate the relatively large amount of insulin she requires over 72 hours in the face of her raging puberty hormones.
) but could your sweet little boy be inadvertently trying to rub or push this cyborg part off his thigh (a natural thing to do at his tender age) because it’s just so there (easily within his sight)? He could be doing this without your knowledge unless you and/or your wife keep your eyes glued on him 24/7 (which I believe would be all but impossible, especially in light of the sheer number of delightful offspring that your happy union has produced). Perhaps an upper bum/lower back Pod placement would be more effective in that Liam might be a little less aware of its constant presence? I realize that “the poop factor” may come more into play with these placements until potty training has been accomplished, but I thought it may be something worth reconsidering…