Hello. I've been MDI for 39 years and my BG has been good or great since I was a teenager. Now I just received my PING and am thinking of selling it on EBAY. My BG are in the 250-300 range and when I do a correction, it has little or no effect, I have changed the site three times and the insulin once. Surely this cannot be the way this works. Is it? I will see the doctor on Monday and believe she will make adjustments. But this is stunning. My question after all that bitching is this normal to have these difficulties? And if so how long will it take to get MDI happy.
Ebay is a good idea. I've stuck with MDI and I'm nearly 4 decades as well. I can't say my sugars have been good but somehow I've avoided the nasty complications. To me the pumps are nothing more then a money making marketing scheme. If your willing to take 6 shots or more you can have the same control and freedom as the pump in most cases and you don't have to have expensive crap hanging off your body.
I had the same experience, the 1st 2 or 3 weeks were terrible, BGs way up in the 300s, but then with adjustments of basals & other ratios, it fell into place, I think it was 3 months before I felt really comfortable with the pump. After 6 months my A1C was 6.3, & then below 6. Now I wouldn't go back, I particularly like the abitity to have basal rates varying over the day & to be able to bolus very small increments of insulin. I, too, nearly gave up.
But the pump is not for everyone, some people do just fine on MDI, my A1C was above 8 which is why I tried a pump.
You need to contact your doctor or diabetes educator more often to adjust things, I had a wonderful Animas trainer who spoke to me almost daily for the 1st week. I was very lucky.
Hi, I dont have the Ping but I do have the MM Revel and just recently started using mine too. I to had a really bad couple of days to start with, the cannula's getting kinked or up against muscle. Im kinda on the leaner side. I don't know about the Ping, but what I've found really help with the Revel is not using the inserter to insert the infusion set and pinching my skin up when I insert to ensure it is in the fatty tissue. Ever since making those changes literally overnight I got amazing results. There is a HUGE learning curve with using a pump, and I so got tired of hearing that word those first couple of days too as I fought with mine, but it is definately the truth
For me using the pump is so much better, I just have a really hard time doing MDI, simply because I cannot get an accurate dose. And I simply dont want to inject 6 or more times a day, it just doesnt work out for me. Im glad if someone can get the same control and freedom with that, but not me, that would be worse for me than having a piece of equipment hanging off me and much less flexibilty. For me one unit up or down can send me high or crashing, but when you have a dose that is say 5.6 untis for carb coverage, I can't do that with a pen, so I was always having hypos several times a day. I've had a few on the pump but they are a lot fewer and farer in between and able to correct much more easily.
It really sounds to me like it is an infusion problem and while maybe not a bent canula, maybe like me the infusion set is infusing between the skin layers. I would call the Ping representitives and ask to speak to a customer service person for some suggestions about insertion techniques. The MM service person gave me better adivice for insertion than the nurse educator.
BTW, I did MDI for 28 years, wish I had made the change over to a pump a LOT earlier.
Unfortunately, yes, it is normal....for awhile There is both a learning curve with the pump, and a period of time needed to adjust numbers. You might want to get in the habit of looking for patterns and adjusting your basals for different time periods first. It takes awhile to get the basals right and nothing else will work if they aren't where they need to be. You will probably find you will use different basal rates at different times of day. If I had had to wait for a doctor appointment to tweak numbers when I started my pump it would have driven me nuts. If you don't own it, get Pumping Insulin by John Walsh to help you with this process. Hang in there. I got my Ping in January and I'd say it was a couple months before things smoothed out. In June my A1C was the same 6.5 it had been before the pump. I just got another A1C and it was 5.7, better than I've ever had. I love my Ping, and couldn't imagine not having it now, but it was definitely an adjustment period.
I think some of it is that to some degree, they are guesstimating how the numbers translate from your prior data, logs reported dosages, whatever and then sort of compare that to what they'd calculate for your TDD based on weight/ age/ activity level and figure out the numbers. If you were rocking it on MDI but over bolusing to make up for missing basal or overbasaling but hitting basal spikes correctly or I dunno what sort of other diabetes mysteries, it might explain how your numbers are running off. If the fasting BG are off, I would suggest trying to increase the basal a small amount, I'll see a pretty signficant change from even .05 more U/ hour sometimes but if you are off by maybe .25 or .5U, it may take a while to get there that way. If it's post-parandial spikes, then I'd adjust the Carb/ insulin ratio, in maybe 1 or 2U increments. Not a huge change but see if you can get it going in the right direction.
When I had my pump, the MM SalesNurse was pretty available and we made a few changes but she and the doc did a very good job pulling my numbers out of my ridiculously messy log. Or maybe they just did age/ weight? I should have asked but I wasn't that concerned about it. For me, it worked really quickly and has been great. I like being able to adjust it in the more minute increments and find that to be a very useful feature. I also like the fact that the pump does a lot better job than I do logging stuff.
Just a thought here but why are trainers not (if they are not) telling new pumpers this is totally to be expected? This is normal, and no reason to even get upset with the pump. I nearly threw mine away as well, until I discovered the set I was using was wrong for me. It takes time, lots of adjusting and lots of testing. It surely doesnt work for everyone but no one should give up when just starting out.
Mine is really good about every few days looking at my data she downloads from CareLink and calling me with tweaking if needed. I just thought it was kinda funny though she never said anything about pinching your skin when inserting, and LOL even funniner I didnt think of it too. But it makes total sense cause after all isnt that how we inject our insulin. But it definately has helped with all my infusion problems, still fine tuning the basals some but Im definately not running 300's like I was the first couple of days. There are lots of factors that can play into getting the pump to work right for you, but definately do not give up, give it some more time. It definately seems to be the norm more times than not that those first few days/weeks are going to be tough.
Thanks for all the quick and very helpful information. My doctor has a dietian and diabeties instructor who only does insulin pumps and my doctor Michael Hiele is also a type one and on a pump. I started on Friday and will be sending them email using Diasend on monday and every two daays following. My concern is that I've done so well on MDI that I feel like I'm failing with this before the weekend is out. I exercise every night and did exactly the same thing using the pump and still the high. I will not give up this soon as i'ver heard great thing about these pumps. Once again thank you all so much.
