I have an out-of-warranty Animas Ping. Over the last few days I have had an occlusion eight times. That can I fix…unhook, reprime, re-hook. But I have noticed another odd thing. Going back over bolus history, I notice that the total bolus for a couple of days is incorrect, instead of the average 21-23 units it says 3-9. So am assuming that this is another sign of it coming closer to it’s final days. So, my question is this…Does anyone have an idea of what might come next, anything dangerous? Doc says I can keep using it as long as blood sugar in control.
I have my supply of syringes and insulins for when it is needed. It is theoretically possible that Tandem/Solara/Pumps It might get their act together and get me a Tslim X2.
If so, is the total bolus recorded for AFTER the battery change correct?
Also when you do a battery change, you also have to reset the date/time of the pump? If you DO have to reset the date/time, be EXTRA careful to get the AM/PM correct as based on the time of day you perform this, is is very easy to end up with the wrong AM/PM and have the pump off by 12 hrs which can seriously impact you depending on what sort of basal schedule you have configured.
Thanks, maybe there is something there. By now I can’t remember exactly when I called Animas tech (and got Medtronic). I do remember that in addition to checking a bunch of stuff, we also had to make an AM/PM change (all other time/date stuff was correct). I went several days without an occlusion until last evening.
Tandem rep has involved Solara and Pumps It, and passed my case up the chain. Hope lives.
The only time to be concerned (in terms of my previous above post) is when you change the AA battery.
When you change the battery, -IF- you are then required to change the date/time then this indicates the internal battery has clearly failed.
(Do not assume the converse is true.)
Without getting into the weeds and making a long rambling post, when you are changing the date/time AT ANY POINT with the Animas Ping, it is VERY IMPORTANT to always be very specific to take the time when done to VERIFY the date/time is correct most IMPORTANT checking the AM/PM.
That is about as much as I can emphasize in a relatively short post.
Without understanding what these various companies are (I know who Tandem is - the rest I assume are perhaps obvious if you reside in that region), if you are dealing with a State sponsored plan, it would not be uncommon to be required to provide a Medicare denial letter first. The intent here is the State plan does not want to pay for anything which is potentially covered by a Federal plan.
If this is the situation, it is not a big deal and potentially has nothing to do with whether you are or are not on Medicare to provide a determination if they will cover this for you. It sounds like you would expect Medicare NOT to cover it (the reason for such is irrelevant) which would then be the letter you would need to provide to the State plan.
My insurance is the Federal BC/BS who will completely pay for my pump, but they do need a denial letter from Medicare. But Solara won’t send my info to Medicare so that they can deny it. Solara has a policy of not sending requests to Medicare if my records show, in advance, that I will not qualify. Catch 22.
My family practice doctor thinks I might be Type 1.5 instead of Type 2. Doing test. If so, that would make this whole thing easier.
Particularly when the internal battery has died, I found a huge advantage in using the AA Energizer Lithium Batteries.
Fewer battery changes.
The AA Lithium last MUCH longer then the regular alkaline.
I don’t know who Solara is.
But cut them out of the picture.
You just need a Medicare denial letter that says Medicare will not pay for a pump for you.
That letter then gets forwarded to whomever needs to read it.
Solara is a Tandem distributor and is a BC/BS provider, Tandem is not. Made a request for pump through Solara, they have to send the letter to Medicare but they won’t do it because they know the request would be denied. I have to go through proferred distributer. if I want the pump paid for. Tandem is working with Solara and also their other provider, Pumps It.
I changed everything, tech had me test some things. A new blood test was done this week, and the results showed that my c-peptide had dropped low enough for pump. So here’s hoping. Neither Medicare nor my insurance was the problem. It was an issue with the distributor.
Interesting. My Ping is three years out of warranty and I always have to put in the date and time when I change the battery.
The only weird thing my pump does is randomly say that it’s not primed, and I have to rewind the cartridge and re-prime everything. So far this has only happened during the day, and it always alarms, but I’m always a bit nervous it’ll happen at night when I’m sleeping. Everything else seems to work fine, though (no missing boluses or whatnot).
I don’t recall if it was our first or second Ping (or both - lol) that required us to set the date/time on battery change. And I also thought it was just normal. It was not until we were on our second Ping and past warranty that I only happened to mention it in passing during a call with Animas Technical Support. (Outside of warranty, support is still provided but no replacements under warranty are allowed.) The Animas Tech Support told me that if that had been called in as an issue while still under warranty, the pump would have been replaced simply due to that.
Jen - do you run your pump with the time set to a 24-hr clock or do you use the AM/PM display? (I assume that is a choice?) The way the AM/PM gets set has a really really horrible user interface in terms of where the focus of the time element goes when setting the clock and I can totally see how this would contribute to the clock being 12 hours off (ie - AM when you meant PM) if somebody is not being quite careful and double checking. I believe this happened to us TWICE. (Like we didn’t learn enough the first time???)
It’s not normal to have to reset the date and time every battery change. My pump went all the way back to 2007, which they said was internal battery failure.
