OmniPod Users: connect here!

Steve D - how long do you have that basal program run for? All day? Thanks to all for the feedback on this. I hate seeing my daughter spike for something that should be helping her.

I do let it run for as long as I am experiencing unexplained highs, ususally one full day. I did have to leave it in place tor two whold days once, but only happened once and I think that was because I moved it to my calf for the first time. Other than that, it just stays in place with basil #2 for one whole day.

yes I also have highs on change days. That is 1/3 of all days so it is not trivial. What I try to do is change it at night and give myself a couple of extra units to smooth out the change. If I need to change at the time of a meal I usually inject to units for that meal so that I don't get stuck with a very high reading while the pump is in the initial phase where it is not working. Also the failure rate with the new pumps is much higher.

steve - you put the pod in your calf?!? where else???

Yes, Joseph. On the calf is a good place (esoecually for runners...the insulin picks up quicker) other than the calf, I use my arms, my hips and my butt.

Iā€™m curious about putting it on your calfā€¦I am a runner and was told I didnā€™t even have enough fat on my stomach to put one there. Doesnā€™t the insulin need fat to be absorbed well? Where on your hip? My arms are my only main resource for placement.

Christine, you don't need 'fat' to insert into an area. Pinch you skin away from the area and hold away from the muscle until the insertion is complete. Let us know how this works for you.

Thanks, Danyelle. Well put. Try it out...Christine!

I have never tried my calf either after reading these posts I might just give it a try. Had a couple of pod failures on 12/31. I think it has to do with static ? I have not used the system in the winter before and I don't know if it's the static or fleece or just the damn cold messing up the pods. Annoying though.

Static can fry a podā€¦have had it happen last winter.

Another pod failure just now, whilst a bolus is being delivered. I am getting really fed up of this. Iā€™m not confident going out any more without loads of supplies (spare pods, insulin etc) which to me defeats the object of the pod - if youā€™re going out and not going to have any carbs etc you shouldnā€™t need to even take the PDM. After 15 months on the pod, Iā€™m seriously starting to think about going back to a tubed pump; I never had anywhere near this number of issues.

Iā€™m in the UK and this will be the 4th time in the last 3 months that Iā€™ve had to call the supplier to report a run of failures and get replacements pods.

Just not good enough in my opinion.

I written before that I believe this failure during a Bolus is a defect issue of some sort with the pods. My daughter is new to wearing the pod (since the end of October) and her failures have been mostly where it leaves .05 units off delivering the full Bolus and deactivates itself. The second time I reported the issue and said I was calling to report a pod failure, the customer service rep said was it during a Bolus? I find it strange that she prompted me with a question of did it fail during the Bolus, unless it was a problem being reported fairly frequently at omnipod. In any event some people here thought the failure has something to do with the pdm and her pod loosing communication during the Bolus. Now I keep the two devices on top of each other during the Bolus just to be on the safe side.

Thanks for that. So since keeping the PDM and the pod close when a basal is being delivered, does that appear to have stopped the failures?

I get no feedback from my supplier whenever I report a fault - they just ask for the batch numbers etc and then send out replacement pods! Think I need to be a bit more pushy!

The occlusion error has nothing to do with the PDM. The error is due to a pod which is to sensitive. New series are less sensitive adjusted to avoid these problems. I am on the new pod since November 2012 and had 7 occlusions. The last one 2 days ago. Never many out of one batch. If you have a wrong batch you will have many occlusions. just bad luck. Replace it and claim a new one from Omnipod.

I started on the old omnipod in Sept 2012 and moved onto the new, smaller pods in December 2012. I had no issues with the old pods, and no issues for quite a while on the new pods. But in the last 4 months Iā€™ve had lots of failures, the worst being 6 failures in 5 days. Seems to me that the new pods are far MORE sensitive than the old ones and that thereā€™s a lot more faulty batches!!!

So far we haven't detected any lot dependency, which isn't to say that some lots are not pod-error prone, just that the reports come from a variety of different lots.

The errors are not occlusions, which are signaled by the PDM as occlusions. Those still occur for some people (I've never seen one). Rather they are "PDM error" errors.

There seems to be no consistency in the error codes, at least nothing I have been able to determine so far (but then I don't know how to decode the codes and haven't analyzed my recent failures.)

In my case the PDM errors started immediately after the change to the new pods - the first four failed - however the failures were taking longer and longer (indeed, pod 3 lasted 71.8 hours.) It seemed that the PDM was learning from the failures and programming the subsequent pods differently.

Since then I've had a total of 11 PDM errors out of 42 pods, however failures have got less and less frequent.

The failures occur both during bolus and basal delivery. Bolus failures occur at the end of the bolus. This probably just reflects when the pod does its checks.

My failures are site specific. After the first four failures (which occurred in sequence on all four sites I was using) all the failures occurred on my upper arms.

After some experiment I discovered that, with I think one exception, the arm failures only occurred if the cannula was high on my arm. If I position the cannula more toward the center of my triceps muscle I avoid the failures, if the cannula is at the top of the triceps, towards where the deltoid muscle crosses it, I get failures.

I suspect the new pods are far more sensitive to site issues than the old ones and putting the pods where two arm muscles cross is just too much for the heightened sensitivity. I still suspect there is also some patient-specific adaptation in the new system as well.

Now I use six sites - over the triceps, the upper center of the pectoral muscles and lower back. I seem to be getting near 100% success with these sites, so long as I am very careful with the upper arm position.

i saw my CDE this morning. He told me some of his T1's on the pods have reported continual pod failures, occlusions too, especially when bolusing over 5 units.

There's another known issue which I didn't mention because I have no experience of it myself. Apparently if a new pod is filled with more than 200 units it will error out. People who used to fill old pods to the 'max' line on the syringe (about 220 units) saw continual errors until they started filling with just 200 units.

@JL_Mom - I had multiple pod failures few months back with the .05 units left during bolus. It ended up with a specific lot number starting in 404. I remember seeing the same issue with the same lot code reported by parent of diabetic kid from a different website. Finally Insulet ended up replacing about 20+ pods for me (failed ones and the unused ones). I am thinking Insulet knows about this issue.