Several times my daughter has faced the question of whether or not to change a pod out early on the third day–before leaving for school because she doesn’t think there is enough insulin to last until she gets home. We have to waste the insulin that is left and we throw off the whole schedule.
Sometimes instead, she will cheat on corrections during that last day to save a 1/2 unit now and then. And/or she will eat less of her lunch and reduce the dose. Not crazy about either of those alternatives.
Then duh, it occurred to me that since we have a large supply of Novo pens (which we only think about for emergencies), she can just take one along as a back up, or even use the pen to cover lunch and stretch the pod insulin to the normal replacement time so we can stay on schedule. She is not crazy about having to do an injection at school again after all these months on the pump but it beats an early pod change out.
we use needles as backup. Our problem came when we wanted lantus as a backup for nitetime. The insurance company will not pay for this. REALLY! so our endo gives us a free bottle at my daughters appointment. My daughter uses novalog for the omnipod.
Thank you all. DBoulding you got it. That’s what I’m suggesting. Use the pen to bolus for lunch but only if the pod insulin is running low. Just wondering how many people were doing that as well.
For some of the other commenters, it is not the pod expiration that is the problem. What happens is she might have a couple of high BG days and use more insulin than we planned. And she hates, hates, hates having to change out a pod at school. So basically when we get in a situation where it looks like she might not make it all the way to dinner on the 3rd day (we change after dinner), she can just do a lunch dose from the pen to keep the pod on for a few more hours.
I know this seems like an obvious thing to do but hesitation related to re-introducing injections–which is not appealing to my 14 year old–but realistically we will end up throwing away the pen after only a few injections (wouldn’t consistently be in the cold storage and will “expire” in 30 days).
How about using a syringe, and the bottle of insulin you are filling the pods with, then you won’t have to throw away a full pen. And instead of having your daughter worry about lunch and injecting at school, either use the syringe to correct for highs, or for supper and breakfast before the pod change, so she knows she will have the lunchtime insulin?
The pod change is less than a 5 minute process… is there any reason she can’t just take an extra pod and insulin to school with her and head down to the nurse or office or bathroom when she needs to change it? I always carry back-up pods and insulin with me in case a pod malfunctions or a manage to rip it off.
Yes, occasionally we have to do this too. It looks like tomorrow will be one of those days after looking thought my daughter’s carb history today - yikes.
I usually have her do a shot at breakfast on 3rd day or at dinner the 2nd night if I catch it early enough. I’d rather have her do the shots at home vs. school because we have a cranky school nurse who would make a big deal out of this and make my DD feel bad (yep, she’s like that).
I prefer to inject and keep the pod on rather than changing the pod in the morning because we are still kind of new to it and I don’t want to be rushed changing it before school.
I hope that helps…we just inject in the kitchen and the insulin goes right back in the fridge so I don’t have to send a new one to school every 30 days.
This is what I do periodically if I am running low in my pod. I had the Endo give me a script for syringes for unexplained high’s and also to bolus when I wanted to extend my insulin until change. This works really well because you don’t have to waste pens. The only thing I find is that the pen needles are sharper than the syringes which makes that injection less painful. But I don’t do this often to warrant breaking out a pen. I do keep backup pens also when I travel for extended periods of time. As a side note, I do have a 18 year old son who is also a T1 wearing the pod and he does the same. If he changes his pod he will go to the nurses station and do the change there. This is something we all agree upon at the beginning of the year. We have a very proactive school nurse who likes to keep tabs on all the T1’s.
