Pod failures

I’m on my third week or so of life with the Omnipod. And before yesterday its been smooth sailing. I haven’t experienced one pod failure or anything abnormally weird with life with an insulin pump. But yesterday this all changed…I was sitting at work and all of a sudden I hear this loud whiny noise…now where I work if the door is left open too long its start making this same sound…so I’m thinking someone needs to close the freaking door. I made a comment to a co-worker and shes like yeah I hear it too. She comes over to me and goes you’re making the sound and I’m like what…so I check my pdm and low and behold its a pod failure. So I get up and go take care of it and put a new pod on my stomach…big mistake…that was a horrible spot and the tape got messed up. So after I pulled that one out,I realized that I didn’t have an extra pod…still had about 8+ hrs left in my work day,so I take my lunch and head on home to change my pump. After that I head back to work…frustrated cause I had to get an uber home. I get to work the rest of the day went ok,…got home,relaxed watched tv got ready to go bed and I hear screaming again,
I changed that pod and went to bed. This morning I’m at work just chilling,my blood sugars 264 so I give myself insulin and low and behold the siren begins. I hold back screaming so that I can keep my job and walk back and change it AGAIN. So now that I have pod 4 in the last 24hrs on…I’m dreading another alarm. I don’t know how to stop this…I don’t want to go back to my tslim,I enjoy the freedom this pump gives very much,and I don’t want to give that up.I’m just tired. What do I do?? Any tipd?

Yes, a couple of things.

  • Get the pods replace if you haven’t already. Insulet replaces failed pods for free.

  • The PDM gives you an alarm code. Call Insulet and report the codes and find out why they are failing. I have a lot of the codes, if you want to post them I might be able to tell you what the causes are. Things like occlusion, failure to deliver insulin, electrical pod failure.

  • If you have a syringe available at all times for an emergency, you can simply take off the failed pod, withdraw insulin from it, and inject it with the syringe. Put a syringe in your purse, car glove compartment, desk at work. If you have only one syringe available, you can survive with the pod insulin until you get home.

  • If all of the pods are from the same box, Insulet will give you the option of replacing the whole box. Request this!

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My guess is you definitely have a bad batch of pods. I have used hundreds of pods over past couple of years and only had one failure. Also make sure that when you insert the cannula that you pinch up your skin. If you are very athletic or in an area with little fat tissue and don’t do this it could cause a failure. Good luck!

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Ditto on the other suggestions. Always write down the code, and always call Omnipod. They will replace them, and ask you to return the defective one for examination.

In the past year of using Omnipod, I have only had 4 pod failures: 1 just stopped working (no alarms), and I tested their IPX8 waterproof claim this September - and killed 3 pods in 3 days.

Omnipod did replace them all.

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Would love to hear a little bit about that experiment…
:slight_smile:

The first failure was not a purposeful experiment, it just kind of happened.

We were at the Black Sea this summer, and I went swimming in the sea for about 15 minutes. Depth of submersion was less than 2 feet at any time - nowhere near 25 feet for 60 minutes. That pod failed on the first swim… and invited additional tries :smiley:

The second and third fared a bit better. I swam multiple times (3-4 times each) for roughly 15-20 minutes, and got out and made sure they dried out before re-entering the sea. They also failed.

The 4th pod I tried lasted the full week, including the swimming. All were from the same batch of pods.

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Thank you everyone for your replies! I did get them all replaced! However they didn’t offer to replace the whole box but they did send me extras and paid for my wasted insulin!