My insurance company approved my pump on Friday & I am supposed to have it on Wed (could have had it today but I wasn’t supposed to be home). I downloaded the Ping manual & was looking thru it. According to the manual, you can’t bolus from the remote. I thought that was the main reason for having the remote. Is this an error in the manual or is this true?
You will not be able to use your meter remote to deliver the bolus from your pump. But you will be able to use the information to manually enter and deliver a bolus amount directly on your pump, or for a pen/syringe bolus.
you can definitely bolus with the remote. We barely even touch my son’s pump. Maybe the manual has info from an older model? not sure, but it’s a misprint.
I think perhaps the section of the manual you’re referring to is dealing with the set-up of the meter remote. And they’re assuming that, during initial set-up, you will not have the meter and pump “paired” using the RF functionality. In this case, even though you would be able to use the meter remote to test and make bolus calculations, you would not be able to communicate with the pump remotely to deliver the bolus.
But during normal use/after set-up, you would always have them “paired” and could do most things with the remote. I only ever touch my pump when changing basal rates. Otherwise, I do everything with the remote.
Just to throw another option in there - I actually use my pump directly in most cases. Reason being, my pump is always either in my pocket, my bra, or my Spibelt and I’m always moving around! If you use the remote to bolus, you have to stay with your remote until the bolus completes (I have mine set to slow to avoid any stinging) OR it will cancel the bolus. So, consequently, I only use my remote to bolus when I’m say, in a restaurant or somewhere that I don’t choose to pull out my pump.
Thank you Cheri - that is good to know. I have gastroparesis and plan to use the extended bolus feature all the time so I guess I will be using the pump to bolus.
I’ve had conflicting information and experiences about what works with the bolusing from the Ping. The rep says that once the pump vibrates 4 times to acknowledge the bolus you can walk away from the Ping and the pump will complete the bolus. My personal experience is that it works that way sometimes and others the bolus is dropped and I have to go back into the pump and manually bolus the rest. Lately I try to stay in the vicinity of my Ping for a normal bolus. I do almost all of my bolusing from the Ping.
I have done many combo boluses from the Ping and they’ve always worked perfectly both the normal and extended portion. I don’t carry my Ping around and the extended bolus is never dropped.
If you are using combo bolus, you don’t have to be within range of your remote when it is scheduled to deliver. However, if you are using the normal bolus for immediate delivery, you need to stay within range of the remote for the duration.
My experience has been that, for combos, you have to be near for the upfront bolus (if you’re doing it from the remote), but not for the extended portion - because that’s handled by the pump itself. I’ll have to try it again to make sure.
I read the same thing! I was mad at first.
They should have worded it that you cannot use your meter remote to deliver the bolus from your pump until/unless you have wirelessly “connected” the meter remote and pump so they can talk to each other.
You definately can bolus from the remote, you just have to make sure the connection has been established between the two.
