I was always very skeptical of the Omnipod and it seemed like people wrote about more problems with it than the other pumps. I worried that the angled insertion would not work well for her, because regular angled sets had been a problem. Finally when the Cozmo warranty was almost up, I decided that any other pump we chose would be going backwards compared to the beloved Coz! So we decided that the offer was too good to pass up and if it didn’t work out, we could get insurance to pay for another pump or go back to the Cozmo until the warranty was up. Melissa never complained about the tubing and did wear the Cozmo in the water, which she couldn’t do with the Minimed. I was always nervous about the Cozmo though, because of the possible problem if there was a hairline crack. With the Omnipod, I never worry about that, because the pod is the only part that gets wet and it is at most 3 days old. It could always be replaced if for some reason anything happened to it in the water. We do use some extra tape or Skin Tac for swimming.
She loves it and not having to worry about how to hide the pump in her clothing. She does have sensitive skin and can only wear it on her arms because of that, but still I fought hard for it to be covered by our new insurance when they said that the “disposable” pump was not covered. I would have been really upset if she had to go back to a Minimed pump. Animas was not an option for her because there was too much of a possibility for a mistake when copying the dose like you have to do with the Animas. She is disabled and gets number order confused at times, so we needed to fight for the simple menu of the Omnipod. Thankfully, we won and also won approval for them to pay for her Dexcom sensors.
I bet you are going to love it as much as she does. Training is super simple, maybe 1/2 hour tops since you are already a pumper. The menu is so intuitive. We actually shouldn’t have even bothered with training, lol.
Love the Omnipod! It is totally worth the pod errors to be tubeless. I love being able to stick the pod to the side of my butt and never even think about it. The pods go bad because there are errors and blockage, with a tube system you would not know until your BG’s went up. Totally worth it, love the Omnipod.
Hi, I’m wondering what the omnipod does differently than the MM pump for calculating IOB for food? What is it that is not easily calculated? My son is going to try the omnipod soon. We just faxed in the paperwork for it. He’s been on the MM for 6 years now.
Thanks for any info you can provide!
"I find the Omnipod very similar to MM’s features with a few exceptions. Everything we need the Omnipod has, although I do wish it easily calculated IOB for food (it does for corrections). But we can deal with that given the other benefits it has!"
Above was posted a few days ago from I think Midwestmommy?
Anyway, question for you…
What do you find different in the way the IOB is calculated for food from the MM to the omnipod? Tim is going to try the omnipod soon and has been on the MM one for 6 years.
Was it an extended bolus? I had a pod failure during an extended bolus, and the PDM was clueless. I called Insulet customer service, and they got an enginer involved and the enginer and the supervisor figured out how much insulin I had received. The first rep I spoke to didn’t understand my question (I think he might have been new) and just before I was going to ask for my call to be escalated, a supervisor took over the call. I should have started the new pod before calling, because it took about 45 minutes to get the whole thing resolved.
Thank you all for the information here. Like others I am in the exact same boat. My MM Paridgm is out of warranty and I am thouroghly confused on which one to go to. Just as I say OK, its the Animas Ping, I go back to reading the “Omnipod” posts. I do have a demo pod that I have yet to try (Why I cant tell you). I love the fact that it is a self inserting cannula, love the fact that it is tubeless, love the fact it is waterproof, but this POD failure does concern me, as well as the size of the PDM. One thing that I would appreciate if any of the males here could answer for me is, The size of the PDM do you find that is difficult to carry around with you? Do you carry it in your pocket? If not where?
Thank you in advance.
If I don’t have a pocket or something else to carry it in I use a camera case that has a clip on it that I just hook to my belt loop on my pants… The case holds the pdm and I have a small lancet device that fits in the in the front pocket of the case. I then have a small vial attached to my keys that hold my test strips. 
When it’s warm out, I can carry everything in my cargo shorts. Otherwise, I carry around a small man bag with all of my supplies. Yeah, it’s a PITA, but that’s diabetes in a nutshell. At this point, I’d rather be certain that I have everything i need with me at all times than worry about what kind of fashion statement I’m making carrying around a clutch purse.
I carry it like a cell phone. In my pocket, a cell phone clip, or my wifes purse , lol.
The great thing about the Omnipod is its not much of an investment in equipment like a Tube Pump is. You don’t need to spend thousands to try it. Go omnipod for 6 months and if you don’t like it its not like you’re stuck with a $5000 pump. Thats what I did and I decided to stay with it.
When the Omnipod calculates insulin on board it assumes that all the insulin you gave yourself for food is going to be covered by whatever food is still reacting in your body. Therefor it doesn’t actually include any food insulin in the IOB. The IOB just includes whatever portion of your correction is left over. It’s the only system I’ve ever been on so this makes sense to me but I can imagine being 2.5 hours after a meal and seeing your glucose is at 80 with no IOB and deciding not to eat when really there is still a little left from the meal that you should have accounted for. The Omnipod’s calculations are better assuming you have all your settings and your carb counting perfect. Living in the real world I can understand why some would prefer to know all the insulin that may still be affecting their system.
The thing to remember, is that no pump in the world really knows the actual insulin “on board.” It is an educated guess. Some of the tube pumps have a profile that assumes a certain absorbsion of insulin and then suggests a potential IOB. As was noted, Inuslet treats a food bolus like we were taught with injections. Once the shot is given, you wait the 3-4 hours before giving a correction. OmniPod takes the same approach and only the correction amount is noted as IOB since you bolus was supposedly matched to your carb intake. You can certainly manually calculate the estimated amount of “unused” insulin left in your body over that 3-4 hrs but you never really know how quickly it is being used up (i.e. food glycemic load, physical activity etc). OmniPod doesn’t know how much insulin is on board either–just takes the “window” you enter and divides evenly. Once you get the hang of it, either way works.
My son (16) waited esspecially for the pod to come out here in The Netherlands, he now has it a month, he thinks it s great, he was injecting 4 times a day, his friend who has a tube thinks the pod s better (smaller) and more modern, pdm use etc…anyway go for it…all he wants now is a connection from the pdm to his pad or laptop…
Ray
I don’t keep the PDM on me; I keep it near me. As long as I can get to the PDM quickly (like when the pod hits 80 hours and starts screetching), it’s not a problem. I keep all my diabetic “stuff” in a lunch box. I keep the PDM in the case that it came with. In that case I also have test strips, a vial of insulin, a lancet, spare batteries, and alcohol wipes. Also in the lunch box I have snacks, my glucagon kit, my Calorie King book, two spare pods, my log sheet and some other non-diabetic medications. I do keep a container of glucose tablets in my pants pocket so I can get to them immediately.
I use Abott’s Dopilot software with OmniPod extensions on my Windows laptop. I don’t know if you can run Copilot on an Apple using emulation. The way the PDM downloads to the software might not work in emulation.
I had my OmniPod for a week before I returned it to Insulet. I could not make it through 24 hours on a single pod for a number of reasons:
- The pod would get an oclusion (blockage) error
- The pod would fall off (during a 5 mile hike and before I started using HypaFix for extra adhesion)
- Canula became dislodged when I rolled over on it during my sleep (no error)
- Or some other unspecified system failure
The dislodging during sleep was the straw that broke the camel's back. Since my BG was over 450, I needed a bolus of 30+ to correct. When I tried to program that into the pod, I got an error that the bolus exceeded the maximum bolus amount and the software just exited. It wouldn't even tell me how much I exceeded the amount by. Thankfully, I have this program on my iPhone called InsulinCaddy which calculated the correct bolus and I was able to split it into 2 for the pod to work. (full disclosure: I wrote InsulinCaddy and it's available in the AppStore :) ).
Also, since I use about 150 units of insulin a day, I would have to put on a new pod each morning before work. You can't pre-fill the pods so the entire process to get a new pod in place is more involved than I can handle at the office.
The software also has its weak points. Yes, I love the idea of going tubeless but unfortunately, the OmniPod was not a viable solution for me.
On the plus side, the people at Insulet were very nice, knowledgable and accomodating. That's good to know if you decide to go down the OmniPod path.