I am on the looking at getting a new pump since my insurance will pay for a new one. I currently use the mini med pump and wondered if anyone out there has used the TSlim pump. Looks like its easier to use less scrolling and its touch screen.
Thoughts?
I like my Medtronic just fine. Melissa, who used to be an admin here, or maybe still is, I have a hard time keeping track of that stuff with all the people floating around cyberspace, has some interesting reviews of the Tslim here:
http://www.sweetlyvoiced.com/2012/10/tslim-review.html although I gather she stopped using it because, perhaps interestingly, it didn't seem to work well with Apidra.
I agree the features of the Tslim, menus and all of that, look very enticing but, at the same time, the Medtronic works for me and I'm totally lazy about switching stuff like that as I've enjoyed good customer service from Medtronic to the point that I'm not really interested in switching.
The one feature that really leaves me cold about the T Slim is the rechargeable battery. In an emergency, I'd rather not have to depend on the lights going back on or the car being available.
Maurie
I agree, I kinda like the security of just popping in a AAA battery and keep on going. I know my new iphone doesn't stay charged worth a damn. Literally by the end of the day I'm in the red with it. That too really kinda worries me about the T Slim pump. How good is that battery going to stay charged and how many times am I going to be annoyed and inconvenienced by having to be plugged up to the electrical source to recharge.
Thanks for the information. Yeah I've been with mini-med since 2000 and I think I'll stay with them based on the information I've read on my own and from others.
For me I already live in a mobile world. I have a 10,000mAh battery with USB ports for charging on the go if needed. I think it was $40 from a company called anker on amazon, but 10k is extreme to charge a full size ipad and iPhone and sill have power left. Energizer sells a pack that you can put 4AA in, and charge a usb device with it also if I lost power for a month for some reason? You can get smaller 6,000mAh packs for about $20 to that fit nice in your kit. Plus I have a work laptop and personal laptop I could use for charging. I personally like the idea of not having to buy batteries.
I used Minimed for nearly 10 years, and switched over to the T-slim almost 9 months ago. While I wasn't not happy with MM for a handful of reasons, I don't know that I much recommend the T-slim either....
In random order, here's some of my thoughts:
Tandem doesn't sell/distribute either pumps or supplies, everything has to go through a distributor, which in my experience has been kind of a pain.
I HATE HATE HATE the loading process, it takes on average 20 minutes, as opposed to the 5 minutes with MM.
The menu system is awesome; its 1000 times easier to see and adjust current settings!
The touchscreen feature is neither here nor there, it works just fine but I didn't see there was an issue in having actual buttons to push.
The battery took some getting used to, but has a million recharging options so it hasn't become an issue at all. I think it lasts me almost 8 days between charges, and I have a couple external battery options that work fine too in addition to the standard wall plug and USB options.
I haven't tested the watertight rating of it, and probably wont until summer again, but that was one of the key reasons I finally ditched MM. (I had the nerve to run a marathon on a rainy day and the rain killed my pump; that was the end of MM for me.) The battery charging door seems a little... weak... though to be the key to keeping it safe when submerged or even just rained on.
The Tandem customer support people are very friendly, but its still a young company and so they don't in general have the years of experience that MM had. I assume they've gotten or will get better, but the first few months I felt like I was calling them and reporting a problem and then calling back a week later to report the work-around because I could find it first.
Maybe not an issue in a big city, but I lost my community support connections when I switched pumps, I no longer know 6 other people who I can call when a shipment goes awry to borrow supplies from.
Because Tandem is so new, there aren't many "certified trainers" for it. Additionally, when they sent me mine they didn't even pretend to try to set up training, they offered the user manual and the website, and said more or less that they'd help me figure out how to set it up if I called the tech support line, but there was exactly ZERO formal training or follow-up.
I guess its a pump, it puts insulin in as best as I can tell (although I do wonder sometimes?), it does the math for me, but it doesn't seem to do anything spectacularly different than any other pump. If I had a chance to do it again, I'd wait until their second generation came out just because then they'd have more experience and I think some of the things I had to work through in the beginning wouldn't come up for the second round....
Sky, what distributor are you using? For me it looks like I will use animos for the infusions being the best in network price. But I’m still between edge park or diabitese care center for my reservoirs.
I just got the tslim last week. Training is included. They may have a better network now than 9 months ago. As for reps and trainers I was put in touch with a trainer in Pittsburg PA, who referred me to a local trainer in columbus ohio and we are meeting on Monday. They told me from the beginning that training was included. I might have improved that over the last nine months?
Support was friendly and willing to refer me to people that could answer my questions. In my case technical questions that I would not expect normal support to know the answers of. But that’s the engineer in me for those difficult tech questions I had asked.
I'm now using Solara Medical Supplies, I think they're based in California? If I remember right, Solara was the 4th one I looked at; Tandem's go-to recommendations were companies that I think the first one wouldn't take BCBS insurance in any form, and the second one would take BCBS but not BCBS of Alaska, and the third one I think offered to set up a contract with my insurance but couldn't ship to AK. I guess most people don't have that many issues!
I'm glad they offered you real people and training, that ought to make it a lot easier to get up and running with!
I called to ask how the pump worked once, specifically in reference to how the insulin gets out of the reservoir/cartridge and into the tubing since there's no visible moving parts... my assumption is that there must be air pressure somewhere squeezing the insulin out (?) but the lady from Customer Support told me "No, no, no, there's no air! It gets scooped out", but couldn't explain what that meant or where the supposed "scooper" is and how it worked.
I hope your tech support experience goes better than mine, and if you find an answer to how the insulin gets out, I'd love to know! : )
I’ll have to check with your distributor to see if they are in network, but it’s another option. Thanks for that information.
As for the tech they have been good. I would not say it has no moving parts, it has what I would call a piston that moves, that would be the little metal silver part you see when the reservoir is off. This metal piston seems to push and pull on a sealed piston in the reservoir causing a vacuume extraction of the insulin in one direction and delivering the insulin when it moved the other direction. Maybe this video would explain it better.
http://youtu.be/IHHdZdVds8I
But because of the piston and not gears with a set distance on the teeth of the gears it’s able to deliver smaller ammounts.
That makes a lot more sense than "scooping"... if she had just said "vacuum" in the first place I would have been satisfied!
I've had a couple instances with Solara thus far where they wait until the afternoon of the day they are supposed to have shipped supplies to determine that they're actually out of what I ordered and it'll be another week or two. That's fine if I have a pile of supplies in the closet, but in both instance I was running out, and was supposed to leave in a matter of days for a trip. I'm going to assume they have a better supply of the regularly used stuff, and as the T-slim picks up in popularity they'll get better at keeping things in stock, but it was a rough start at least.
It never occurred to me to search out different distributors for different parts of the system, I'll have to see if I can find someone else who takes my insurance and can offer better prices on the different parts!
Don't do it. First of all, I've never had so many highs and lows as I have had with this device. The touch screen is enticing and feels more contemporary (like a smart phone), but takes multiple steps to even deliver insulin. The biggest problem (to me) is that the T-slim and the meter do not talk to each other -- so it's hard to be unobtrusive in a restaurant.
If you do try it out, the return policy is only 4 weeks. I didn't realize how much I missed the meter-pump connection until 6 weeks. My insurance only pays for one every 4 years, so I feel stuck!
Are any of you using the t-slim with a DexCom CGM?
I wanted the tslim...but I have to go through a metal detector every day. That eliminated the tslim for me. Otherwise, it seemed really great.
I am! My thoughts on the Dexcom are much more positive than my thoughts about the T-slim (for which I feel mostly just mediocre about at this point), and I think everyone should get not just any CGM, but specifically the Dexcom G4 CGM issued as standard equipment upon diagnosis.
I agree as far as the G4 platinum CGM, it has made a world of difference for me! Why just mediocre thoughts on the T-slim? Any specific complaints? How's customer service been?
I personally love my T:Slim so far. It's been a great pump and its very easy to use and learn with a great touch screen. They will be integrating with Dexcom G5 sensor this year. And their customer service has been great so far.
+1
I agree with most of your comments. The loading process is much more labor intensive than it should be. We are already bogged down with all the maintenance of this disease. You should have a local rep who can offer supplies in an emergency. I have had more highs with tslim vs. the MM pump. The quickset infusion sets worked fine with MM but almost every one crimps on the tslim! Is anyone else having this problem?
What part of AK? There is a trainer in anchorage who travels all over AK!!! Diabetes specialty center ships to AK and accepts BCBS of AK no problem!!!