My first impressions with an insulin pump

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Hi John! Sorry to hear that the pump start has not been encouraging!

The pump definitely takes some time to get used to. When I started on it, my doctor made me promise to stick with it for six months and she said to expect it to be harder in the beginning and get easier later. I found her advice to be just right in my case.

The pump isn’t for everyone, but it can offer some real advantages. In addition to the ease of bolusing, you can have different basal patterns for different days and times of the day. But in order for this to be effective, you need to invest a lot of time into getting your settings right (basal rates, carb ratio, etc). This means lots of testing in the beginning.

Suggestions for some of the struggles that you are facing:

  1. you can wear your pump under your clothing so that you don’t need to worry about the kids catching on the tubing. For example, I sometimes wear my Minimed 722 pump on my upper calf using a sport MP3 player holder. Or try a SPIbelt or similar holder and wear the pump in a way that you can tuck most or all of the tubing in (if you buy a SPIbelt, use the code: tu10 to get a 10% discount).
  2. You might want to try a different type of infusion set. I can lay on my infusion set with NO pain (and I often do). I use 6mm Quicksets, but I know when I used 9mm Quicksets they hurt a lot more. I also have read great reviews about the Sure T infusion set. You should be able to get samples from Minimed or your pump rep.
  3. If you don’t already have it, I HIGHLY recommend the book Pumping Insulin by John Walsh. It’s a comprehensive guide to pumping that taught me a lot about how to use the pump effectively.

I have never used the CGM, but I have heard very mixed reviews about the effectiveness of the Minimed CGM. But some people have found it to work well. I once heard a recommendation that you should not over calibrate (only twice a day when it requests it) and that you need to be sure to calibrate when your blood sugar is relatively stable.

Hope that you have more encouraging experiences with the pump! It does take work, but I have found it to make my life a lot easier and give me much better control!