That's much safer than what I do; I have the whole box on the table, the old one stuck to some part of my anatomy and the new one sitting next to the PDM, but that means there may be 8 unactivated pods within range of the PDM in addition to the one I want to activate.
Hum, maybe I'll move that box to more than 1m away ;-)
John Bowler jbowler@acm.org
My son has now had 10 failures in our last shipment of 4 boxes - one whole box. Most in the same lot number.
After complaints about the insulin lost, Insulet did tell me the process to get reimbursed for the insulin loss (2 vials). They reimburse only your out of pocket costs (copay) not the whole amount, so I'm not sure it is worth the hassle to write the letter detailing each pod failure and copying receipts, etc. to receive that amount of money back.
It might be worth it for others that have larger copays, pay for insulin out of pocket or work on a high deductible. This seems to be only for those that have lost considerable amounts of insulin due to repeated failures not the isolated pod failure here and there every few months.
Thought some of you might need to know. Ask!
My son has been on the Omnipod for 2 and a half years and in that time has had 1 injection. Not to say there haven't been multiple pods that have failed, and a new PDM (or maybe 2?) but we've never had to resort to an injection.
Only 3-4 months for me, but if I did have to give myself an injection I think I'd feel like I had regressed to the dark ages.
Here's another piece of data.
I just changed my pod; this one was a beautiful healthy double-beeper. However I carefully put it about 30cm from the PDM and whopped down the box of unactivated pods right next to the PDM.
The PDM would not communicate with the pod, or, for that matter, anything ("communication error"; hey, I know how you feel ;-). I moved the DB pod closer to the PDM, slowly. The PDM kept on trying to communicate (I didn't have my scanner on, so I don't know what it was doing exactly). After I'd moved the pod to about 20cm, however, the communication started and everything went fine.
So... When there is a DB pod close buy the pods in the box don't have any effect. During activation the PDM has to be within 20cm, but after activation communication happens up to about 1m - so that's five times further.
I find I'm getting into the habit of tapping the PDM onto the pod though any time I want them to communicate. 1m is way to easy to achieve with my arm length. Personally I'm fine with this, I'd much rather be in control of when they talk than having them chatting away behind my back, I guess that's a little humanist, but it's my pancreas they're replacing.
John Bowler jbowler@acm.org