Tonight I had a pump failure…for the second time (Medtronic paradigm). The last time was two years ago. The same thing happened each time, when I went to bolus, the button stuck somehow about the screen keep scrolling numbers 1-300. This happened 3 hours ago and now the screen reads “button failure.” Last time this happened I had to wake up every 4 hours during the night to take Humalog by injection, but this time I am lucky enough to have my old 515 pump, so I am using that.
The problem for me is that I don’t remember my exact basal rates, and I cannot retrieve them from the broken pump. I have the printout from the last time I saw the endo in April, but I had tweaked things since that time and didn’t record the changes. I am super annoyed because I had recently done periods of fasting (6 hours at a time) to monitor my basal and see if it is right, and I had finally perfected things. Now I have to start again, tomorrow when I get another pump.
I also waited 25 minutes on hold with Medtronic to get technical assistance and order a replacement pump, which I obviously also found annoying. In general,having a failure like this for the second time really does not help my confidence level in the company. Next time I may switch to another pump, but I also have the Minilink CGM so switching would be a big commitment.
Sooo, learn from my mistake! Always record precisely all of your pump settings. I change my often so I usually just keep the printout from my endo every 3 months. I used to throw them away…never occurred to me that I might need them until my pump failed the first time.
At least I was at home when it happened. Last week I was traveling and it really would have sucked to have it happen them.