Tandem survey

I got an emailed survey from Tandem about my Tslim pump satisfaction.
My response was “neutral”. My two recommendations were allowing a temp insulin without turning off IC and noting there were too many clicks for extended insulin bolus.
I did not give it much thought or may have added other things. I’m sure I would have but it’s a busy day. I really miss the temp insulin feature I had with Medtronic and don’t want to go thru the hassle of turning off IC for Tandem. Or is it CI, I never can remember.

Out of warranty (and trying out the Omnipod at the moment) so didn’t receive the survey.

The one thing I think every AID system should have: sliding scale insulin sensitivity. 1 unit of insulin when your blood glucose is 145 will be more effective than 1 unit of insulin when your BG is 240. People should be able to input different sensitivities for different BG ranges (or keep them all the same if that isn’t true for them.)

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Yes, different sensitivities is an issue for me, also, and blood glucose level is often the variable.

You can do thst in tandem and Medtronic so I’m surprised thst the pods don’t have that

By “that”, do you mean have a sliding scale?

I realize with Tandem you can have different insulin sensitivities for different times of day and in different profiles, but I’m pretty sure you can’t have them for different BG levels. For example, if I’m at 115, a unit of insulin might bring my BG down 50, but if I’m at 240, the same unit might bring down my BG only 25. That’s the sort of sliding scale I’m talking about and I’m not aware of it in any commercial AID system.

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Those are good suggestions and I concur. I particularly miss temp basal, and I use extended a lot, so getting through all those screens is kind of a pain.

What I do most appreciate as a former MedT user is that the system feels like it’s designed to be an assistant rather than an inflexible auto-pilot. My experience with the MedT AID system ended with the 670G, so excuse my lack of hands-on experience with the 770, but as I’ve written elsewhere I got really tired of the HAL9000 “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t let you do that” approach that seemed to be written into its DNA. The ideal they were aiming for was a blackbox you could set-and-forget, but to do that they had to kick you out of the pilot’s cockpit and lock the door. I gather they’ve loosened up a bit–you can set your own target, within limits, for example. But I think it’s still essentially where they’re coming from. Tandem by contrast lets you override just about anything except target, which is higher than I would choose but largely irrelevant if I can go ahead and override all the other parameters. For example when I’m setting up a bolus and I’m in the 90s, it will give me “Your BG is below target. Reduce bolus accordingly Y/N?” I say No on that one all the time. I’ll take it into consideration if I’m really low, but mostly I’d rather deal with running a bit low than fighting highs, and the pump lets me do that. I was shocked when I discovered that I could ignore the recommendation entirely and enter my own bolus amount if I wanted. Sometimes I’ll enter a my own BG value if a finger stick says my CGM is off but not enough to be worth calibrating for.

The system seems very resilient about that kind of thing. I don’t always exercise those options—maybe 20% of the time—but it’s nice to know I can. I gather 770G is more flexible than the 670. But my experience really made me feel like the whole philosophy was resistant to the kind of relationship—and it IS a relationship—I wanted to have with such an intimately connected life partner, bionic as it may be. I feel like the system is doing its best to fit my needs, listening to what I have to say rather than dictating to me all the time.

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The old Cozmore pump had a way to titrate based on bg. Sadly that company got “eaten” up by Medtronic. What I do is to do the math in my head. Up to 140, I use the set ISF. 140- 170 I increase by 10% (easy math), then up by an additional 20% etc.

I too am a Tandem X2 person, using BIQ for as long as I can. I know I will have to switch to CIQ eventually, so I will turn off CIQ to access temp basal - a very useful function.

Well, yes, it’s not hard to figure it out oneself. I’m referring to the corrections and basal changes made automatically by an AID system like CIQ.

There is no pump on the market right now that has a titrate function based on bg as the sole factor.

That’s probably because every T1D person is different.

Thank you for expressing so well how I feel about the tandem, too! I would’ve struggled to put it into words but yes the idea of it assisting me is correct; it helps me out rather than takes over entirely.

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