I'm still waiting for my recall let from insulet!! I waited on line for over 2 hours this afternoon & cant get thru to Abbott. This really suks.
Ok, I just got thru to Abbott & they are sending me 400 strips. I told them I never received any letter & they were surprised because they had all my info in their system. BTW, with the old strips I'm getting the same number in both my omnipod meter & my Freestyle Freedom lite meter. All my strips come from liberty medical & are the blue & white box that say :use only with freestyle & omnipod meters". Expire date is 2014/06. strange.
Wow, what a frustrating experience...at least I only had to wait about an hour for the untrained person to answer the phone and read to me off a prepared dialogue while fighting the hiccups. Why could't they develop a website to order the new strips? Anyway, I guess I'll be getting the new strips in the mail soon.
hahaha god
I waited 2 hours to get through but once on the phone I confirmed my address and I just came home to 400 strips in a box. I waited one day, they overnighted them to me. I feel like that was amazing service. I just went on omnipod recently and the day my pharmacy filled my prescription they recalled the strips, crazy timing. It all worked out good. My strips that my local pharmacy gave me give good numbers even though Abbott said not to use em, they test the same as my accucheck meter,weird. I was told anything 08/2015 or later are fine, mine were from 05/2015. New strips are blue box, one's from pharmacy were yellow.
Just for the heck of it I started doing some readings with new and old strips. My readings are 133 and 132 every time I check. I'm wondering because I just went on the pod if when I went to the pharmacy and they didn't have any strips it was because this happened and I already got newer one's. I know the rep at Abbott said to only use date code 08/2015 and later but I haven't had an issue with my strips and I've been using them since I went live on the pod 2 weeks ago, I didn't even think my strips were included until I got a letter from fed-ex. I guess it's use at your own risk but I feel i'm dumping 450 perfectly good strips if I throw them out, if I see a really low reading I will check with another meter to see but I haven't had one strip give me an erroneously low reading, weird you think some may be fine but they had to recall em all?
Your meter - the Freestyle Freedom (which I think they ship with the initial Omnipod start up kit) or the Freestyle Lite meters are fine to use with your old strips. The only "meter" that does not work correctly with the "old" strips is the meter resident within the PDM. If you have any questions about whether the strips are ok to use, do a control solution test and make sure it falls between 76-114 with the control solution that came with your meter.
There are strips from which expire on 02/15 from lot #1371831 that are ok'd by Abbott.
There are also two recalled meters that are the same as what is in the PDM. Freestyle Flash and one other. Just says Freestyle on it. I don't understand why they didn't put that info in the letter, but it is on their site, in the press section along with the other letter about the PDM.
I did a control solution test when I first heard about this issue because I thought I had to use them and they come up with 96. I have strips from 2/15 and 5/15 from local pharmacy, new strips are 08/15. I appreciate it.
They had 2 separate recalls because the one that involved the 2 older meters the Flash and the Freestyle might not affect Omnipod users and therefore they could just replace the meters - their strips would be fine. The one that affected the Omnipod affected anyone using the meter in the OP device to test their blood sugar and dose insulin as a result. For us they had to replace all the strips because the meter can't be replaced by them and Insulet sure isn't about to remanufacture PDM's to accommodate Abbott.
Right, but you said the old strips would work in any meter, so I wanted to point that out. I tossed a Flash meter when I saw the recall.
And also would like to from Abbott know when anyone is getting a recall letter for those meters? Lots of us had them, and if people are not on message boards like this, they have no clue.
My mistake the only meters that the old strips might give erroneous low readings are the OP PDM and the older Flash and original Freestyle meters circa 2010.
I do not have either of those meters. My insurance company required me to switch to Abbott products in 2012 and sent me a Freestyle Lite meter with 10 complimentary strips :). Subsequent to that I got a Dexcom G4 and an Omnipod system which was accompanied by a Freestyle Freedom meter which was not involved in the recall.
Thanks Clare, there is just so much confusion about this. My friend freaked out this morning when she read on Diabetesmine and thought that none of the replacement strips were any good unless they had those two code numbers! It really is quite a mess that Abbott has created, and I really don't expect them to be truthful about exactly what the problem was, etc. They kept everyone in the dark for so long on the Navigator, when they had no intentions of bringing it back in the U.S.
Am I the only one that never received a letter? Just curious. Good thing for this post!
That's exactly how I feel. I just know for some people it's hard to get basic diabetes supplies so I feel like I can't just toss my possibly marginally off strips when my son has a Dexcom anyway. We'll calibrate with the "good" strips and then we'll know if it's crazy off. But that way we can continue to use the "bad" strips without wasting them.
Hi, I don't know if this was mentioned already or not, but for those of you who have a Freestyle Flash meter as their backup meter to their Omnipod PDM, this meter was also part of recall from Abbott.
https://www.abbottdiabetescare.com/press-room/2014/2014-a.html
Because of this, if you call the Abbott recall phone number to say you use this meter, which uses the Freestyle Test strips, they will replace it will a FreeStyle Freedom meter that can be used with the recalled Freestyle Test Strips without any problems. From what I understand, it is only the FreeStyle Freedom meter, not the FreeStyle Freedom Lite meter that will work with the recalled test strips. This is what the Abbott rep told me when I called.
Here is a link to the Abbott page that shows the meters that are compatible with the FreeStyle test strips:
https://www.abbottdiabetescare.com/products/patient/test-strips-com...
I actually received both the replacement test strips and new FreeStyle Freedom meter recently.
I never did either. Thank goodness for Tudiabetes!
I had a Freestyle Flash As my back up meter to my PDM and Abbott replaced it.
Oh I forgot to mention this, did anybody else's rep ask their permission to take over there diabetes supplies. Abbott asked me If they had my permission to be my supplier, kind of a weird way of breaking in new patients. "hey we recalled all of this"by the way can we have all your business. What do I know, I did think it was humorous the way the girl asked me
No, they didn't ask me that. They asked if I authorized them to talk with my pharmacy to make sure I got the proper supply, though. This is all so weird!