I know I have written about this before, but I am battling high bg readings with almost every pod I put on-- we are on pod #4 this week already, the longest running just happened to have a different batch number.
I feel I am at my witts end. My poor little boy is only 3, and I hate to have to do any more to him than necessary, but it seems as though every pod I place just doesnt seem to work right away, if at all. I know he is on a low dose, which probably accounts for much of the problem, but when we have “good” pods, I find myself fighting low bgs. This batch I can even get him to come down below 200!
I just want to know if anyone else is experiencing the same thing or if anyone can offer advise.
I’ve had similar problems in the past, and I know there are other forum topics on this subject. When I change infusion sets, and after I’ve primed the catheter (the pod does this for you automatically), I will give myself a fake bolus. I’ll tell the pump I’m going to eat ZERO calories, then when it asks to confirm the units of insulin to deliver (it will default to 0.0 units), I’ll just scroll up to 1-2 units, depending on how I’m trending. I’m a 210-lb adult male, so I’ve no idea what would be the appropriate amount of units for your son. I average about 40 units/day of humalog, so my fake bolus would be about 2-5% of my total daily does (TDD). I’d suggest experimenting, give him a small fake bolus right after a pod change, then him aevery 30 minutes, or so, to see how his sugars react. You’ll need to keep him from eating anything carbalicious during this test, so that you’re only tracking his BG response to the pod change and mini bolus, rather than adding additional food boluses on top of it. Sort of like basal testing. It also wouldn’t hurt to closely track his blood sugar readings before a pod change. Is his BG trending up, stable, or down? How does affect his BG trending after the pod change.
When I was on the pod (I switched back to my original pump in May 2011–Cozmore), I tended to run high near the end of each pod’s 3-day life cycle. I don’t have a good answer for why it was happening, but it did happen a lot. Maybe my body heat was degrading the insulin, since I was constantly warming the insulin in the pod. Or maybe I was getting some catheter leakage. I don’t know. But the mini bolus right after a pod change always helped keep my blood glucose numbers in a more stable, safe range.
I would guess after a few more pod changes and with some intensively BG testing/monitoring, you should be able to come up with a bolus/pod change routine that keeps his BG numbers under better control.
This was one of the reasons why my endo was dead set against the OmniPod – too many pod issues. If it were my kid, I would highly consider switching to a tubed pump. The Minimed Revel is a good pump. If you’re worried about the tubing, I can assure you that a lot of kids have tubed pumps and do just fine. Even at 3, he will quickly learn to work around the tubing. Most importantly, if you cannot get his numbers down on the pod, switch to shots for now. Running that high is NOT good!
We have the same issues…1. is this pod even working? Can’t get her bg below 180! and 2. geez, is this pod just blowing out insulin because I can’t keep her bg above 60! and 3. this pod is working great! her avg bg has been 110 for 3 days!! and that will be three different pods in a row with the same vial of insulin, same settings, same diet (she’s almost 6 and doesn’t stray much from her chicken nugget diet) etc…
I feel we do all the right things including giving that “fake bolus” after a pod change just to get it “flowing”, which I do think does help. We also have a ton of pod failures for various reasons. Only had 2 occlusions in the “almost” year we’ve been using the pod. But it confuses me why we don’t get that occlusion alarm more often. Once I took the pod off because the bg just wasn’t coming down and the cannula was bent in 3 places like a bolt of lightening so you know she couldn’t have been getting much of anything at all but no alarm…
If I could I would switch to the Animas Ping but I think my dtr is stuck with this for the next 3 yrs. She’s almost 6 so it really means nothing to her but it drives me crazy. I don’t know what advice to give you and it’s frustrating but know you are not the only one
