Today, I officially started on my pump. I felt a little nervous at starting, even after watching all these videos on youtube about pumping. My nurse was the one that did my training on the pump and we started out with some of the basic stuff. She taught me how to bolus with the ezcarb and how to suspend the pump and also to do a temporary basal. I think she did this so I could get a feel for the pump and hopefully next by next week I could do a little bit more with my pump. Thank God that I have the dexcom so it will let me know if I go a little low than normal. One question out of a thousand, what did you start off on as a basic start on your pump?
Hi Billy and congratulations! I'm a little confused by your question of "what did you start off on as a basic start on your pump?" Do you mean basal dose? I believe my total basal was 12 units, very similar to what it is now 3 1/2 years in, only I now have different rates for different times of day. But everyone is different in our insulin needs. see from your profile that you are a Type 2 so you will likely take a much higher dose than I do as a Type 1. The dose that works is the right dose for you. But to give you a framework, my basal dose on shots was 16 so that is a 25% reduction for pumping which is fairly standard.
Did you have an I:C and an ISF that worked for you on shots? Chances are your numbers on the pump will be similar.If you don't know what those things are, or want some more information and understanding about insulin and pumping I highly recommend the book "Pumping Insulin" by John Walsh. And don't hesitate to ask more questions here. Enjoy your pump! It does take a bit of getting used to and the doses will have to be tweaked until it is right for you, but then you will most likely love it!
Hi zoey! Sorry for the confusio. I was asking on what basics of the pump did they start you off on? My nurse started me out on learning to do the ezcarb bolus and how to suspend my pump and also to do temporary basal. My I:C is set to 1:12 and my ISF is 34. But, like you said we are all different and this is my first week on the pump, so I got a lot to learn and adjustments to do before I’m really settled.
Oh, sorry, Billy, now I get it. For me, I just had two training sessions with an Animas rep. The rep put me on saline for a week after our first session so during that time I read the manual and familiarized myself with all the settings. What I really needed help with was inserting the sets. I have terrible hand eye coordination. I learned to do it but still had problems with the automatic sets so I switched to the manual steel sets, the Contact Detach and haven't had a problem since. Do be sure and get an assortment of infusion set types so you can see what works for you.
Congratulations on starting with your insulin pump!
If you haven't done it already, I'd recommend getting the "My Insulin Pump Workbook" from the Animas web site. You can access it here: http://www.animas.com/sites/default/files/pdf/Pumpworkbook.pdf. Once my pump was ordered, I printed the workbook and went through the whole thing before I even had my first training session. The information was very valuable and I found I already knew most of what the training went over. My training sessions became more of a demonstration and questions & answers thing. It taught me how to test for correcting basal rates, etc.
