Hi, my 9 year old son is just 3 months with the omni pod and we are going to Hawaii in March. Does anyone have any tips on swimming and the pod?
Thanks
You can swim just fine with the Omnipod. My daughter did great this summer in Florida with it. I pushed it and let her swim for quite a few hours. I would change the pod every 48 hours or every 24hours just because the swimming will abuse it.
also if he will be very active don’t forget to use the temp basal settings and turn down at least -60% basal rate.
hope this helps
Erin
thanks so much. I had heard that you could not stay in the water for more than 1/2 hour and that was scaring me a bit.
How long has your daughter been on the Onmi Pod?
Laurie
I asked about that when my son first started on the pod - I was told that you can’t stay underwater (8 ft down?) for more than 30 minutes because of the pressure on the pod or something. My son wore it swimming at the pool quite a few times for a couple of hours each time. Definitely start a temp basal about an hour before you start swimming though. You can wrap it with a Coban 3M wrap if it feels more secure (on the arm) but you don’t have to do anything from what I understand.
Thank you, that is pretty much what I heard. He really does not stay under water, just plays around and boogie boards.
Thank you for responding, I appreciate it.
This past summer was my daughter’s first summer with diabetes and the omnipod and it was fine. The only thing was water sports, like kneeboard and tubing. She came off the tube one day and the the pod was gone. It actually deactivated itself and we just put a new one on. Swimming defintiely is great excercise but you do need to be careful of lows. That’s the thing that makes me a bit nervous. We tell he to never swim alone (not that she would anyway) but to really be aware of how she is feeling. maybe an extra snack would help too.
Thanks Renee,
If the swimming is the only thing that makes you nervous, you are better at this than me!
Thanks for the insight. I really appreciate it!
I have to say I do get nervous about alot of things but my daughter does well. She has her moments as well but for the most part she “seems” to understand what she needs to do. How does your son do? What about skin irritation? My daughter gets horrible skin irritation and I do believe we have finally figured out what works for her. Just curious if youhad a similar experience. How long has he had diabetes? She was diagnosed in February 2009. I worry for her future. Good luck with your son and have a great trip. I’ve been to Maui and it is beautiful.
Hi Renee,
Sam was diagnosed almost 3 years ago. He is such a good boy and really for the most part rolls with the punches. It is extra hard with him being celiac, so limited in what he can eat, but we work through that too.
As for skin irritation, thankfully we have not had an issue with that. At the very start with the omni pod the diabetes educator told us to be super careful and make sure that the skin was dry under the pod when applying it. Other than that I guess we have been lucky.
I worry about Sam’s future every day. The diabetes really sucks, way, way , way too much to ask of a kid. But maybe it is a good thing that they got it young and learn to live with it. But I hear that the teen years are really a “treat.”
On a happy note Maui is awesome. We go every year in March. We used to go to Mexico, but we are just not comfortable with that anymore if heaven forbid there were a problem.
We have been lucky in that in Sam’s school of 400 kids there are 5 with type 1, so he does not stick out. It has also helped me because of the support from the other moms. Plus I found a great group of Moms of Diabetic kids.
Good luck with your daughter, it will all be fine, and remember to keep your chin up. She needs you!
Hi Laurie,
We have a pool in the back yard and my daughter (now 15, diagnosed at 12) lives in it during the summer. The only time she comes out is when I make her come out to check her BS. We use IV prep before putting the pods on, and during the summer we also regularly use 3M micropore tape, and that really helps. Without the tape, we have had pods come off – the adhesive just lifts up. Also, when she plays around with her friends – jumping off tubes, and rafts, etc. – we’ve had a couple of pods get knocked off that way. If he spends a lot of time in the ocean, definitely keep an eye on his blood sugars. For some reason, they don’t feel the lows as much when the waves are crashing around them. My daughter was in the ocean in NY, and she’d been in for about an hour when I made her come out to test. Thank God I did, because she was 40! She didn’t feel it at all until she got out of the water. Fighting the waves to stay up is really good exercise, and your son is probably still honeymooning, so keep a really close eye on him because his blood sugar will likely go way down. (And, the effect usually lasts into the next day for my daughter.) The good news is, if he spends the day in the ocean, he’ll probably be able to eat lots of food. My daughter LOVES beach days, because she can usually eat junk food with her friends and her blood sugar still stays low. Have a great time in Hawaii!
Renee, my daughter gets skin irritation too. She’s got very sensitive skin. The 3M tape doesn’t aggravate her at all, but the pod adhesive does. We try to moisturize her skin a lot when she’s not wearing a pod on a certain site, and vary the sites a lot, but she still gets some irritation. I think she makes it worse by pulling the pods off without using something like Uni-Solve, but she says she hates the way it feels.