I’ve been on hold with Tandem support in Canada for over an hour and a half, after my pump displayed a malfunction with the code 12-0x2071. After my first 45 minutes or so of hold time, I did some online research and discovered restarting the pump often fixes malfunctions. Not this time! Now my pump is completely dead and will not restart. Thank goodness I hung on to my old Medtronic 630. I haven’t even had the slim for 90 days. Support hold time currently one hour, 41 minutes and counting. Completely inexcusable for a life saving medical device company.
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Oh what a pain in the ■■■!
For this very reason I keep a few pens and use penfills as my Humalog source. A dead pump or ripped out infuser when away from home isn’t as much of a big deal if I can give myself 2 units +/- correction every three hours (yes, a pain to set alarms at night) plus meal boluses.
Tandem will replace the pump in usually 1-2 days. If it were to go beyond that I’d resume some form of long acting insulin.
I survived almost 30 years with MDI and could go back if need be. I would miss my GCM (Dexcom) more.
Ok, well this has been resolved, and I hate to admit that some of it was user error. When resetting the pump, I attached the power cable and held the power button down. When Tandem support did finally answer (after over 2 hours) I was instructed to plug in the pump, NOT hold down the power button, and wait. Sure enough, it restarted on its own. Glad to have it working again, but I am just a little concerned, knowing a malfunction could occur at any time…
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I’m seeing a shocking number of these malfunctions lately. There used to a random person here or there that would inquire about them, but now it seems like all the boards are rife with reported malfunctions.
This hasn’t been the norm in the past, by any means. I’m wondering if there’s a glitch in the recent firmware upgrade. Or maybe even if the FDA forced some additional security monitoring that’s getting tripped. I suspect we’ll see a revised software update in the near future, if this continues.
First of all, I love your shoulder siamese, I have one too 
I am glad you got it worked out. I also had some issues for the past two weeks and it has been awful. For the first time I was on hold for 71 minutes, she said she could not replace my pump after numerous useless tests that still told me nothing. I had to speak to the clinical team first. I called again when my pump battery charge went down too much and after 44 minutes I gave up. My blood sugar was coming I think down a little bit, and came back to normal by the time I woke up.
2 days later I finally talked to the tandem clinical team, She troubleshot some things and we are not sure what happened but she said next time if I have a problem I don’t have to talk to them first they will just send me a new pump.
So I had another problem Sunday but I managed to get it under control and I think it could be a combination of problems with the cartridges and or the inset and the site so I don’t know if it could be absorption. I don’t know I still am worried it could be something with my pump too. So if it happens again I will have to call back but I’m hoping I don’t have to get another pump, I just got this one in the spring to replace my original one that failed.
It has been a truly awful 2-3 weeks and I am now scared to change my insets and cartridges. I also had an incident where a new inset popped out partially and I did not get a meal bolus fully.
I also read accounts of three or four people at least who said they’re pump had total a failure after they did the software upgrade to use your cell phone to bolus etc.
This illustrates the problem with troubleshooting complex systems in the modern world. The 1st rule use to be “Is there power?” Now it could be a corruption of soft or firmware, something mechanical, or electronics. 1st line support is often lacking in a real understanding of how the whole system works.For some reason they are hesitant to escalate to those with a better understanding of how stuff works.
This is not just about insulin pumps but nearly everything in our connected world. I recently bought a new dryer and later a new washing machine. I wanted the controls to be as simple as possible. The offerings were touting WI-FI connectivity. WOW! What a useless feature on an laundering device. Extra cost and something else to break.
The dryer I bought is the only one I could find without a lot of frills. My only complaint, well two, is that there is no light in the drum and the buzzer is really loud and long.
Anyway, I keep a vial of Lantus and syringes, have 2 Humalog pens and 1 Lantus pen for backup if the pump fails. I also have a glucometer (2 actually). It has not been a year since I transitioned from MDI to Tandem, so it wouldn’t be a big deal to go back.
having spent a lifetime working with electromechanical and computer driven systems it is always good to have a backup plan.
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More to this story, as while driving this morning the alarm on my tslim went off again to alert me of a malfunction. Luckily I had my old Medtronic with me so it was an easy switch. When I reached my destination I reset the pump successfully, except it was showing 10% charge and 0u. When I left the house I had 50% and 80u. It didn’t much matter, because as I was going through the steps after resetting, it malfunctioned again.
This time my call to Tandem support was answered within minutes, and the person on the phone immediately said I needed a replacement pump. However, “replacement” is not the same as new. After some discussion it was decided I would indeed be sent a new pump to replace my barely three month old one.
New pump is supposed to arrive tonight. Fingers crossed!
@meee that’s Mya, our 13 year old Siamese on my shoulder. She and her sister are wonderful pets! We’ve had Siamese cats in our family for over 30 years.
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Years ago there was a Siamese cat named Buffy who liked to sit on my shoulder like your Mya. It used to drive my wife nuts because she would take nibbles off my fork. Of course I was a willing participant. She wasn’t a Seal Point but colored like this Blue Point.
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Siamese are wonderful, intelligent animals. I think some people are a little put off by them and maybe find them stand offish, thanks in part to movies like Disney’s Lady and the Tramp. Our two are like puppies, very responsive, love to just hang out with us. I remember once before my wife retired, I was at home and she pulled in the driveway. When she closed the car door, both cats came running downstairs and were all excited to greet her.
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We are Siamese if you please.
We are Siamese if you don’t please.
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Yes I have my back up now of toujeo from when my pump failed last spring and I was worried I might need it, but it was still pumping insulin so I was able to use it until the whole fiasco of five pumps being sent to me and 4 having to be sent back and I finally got this one that seem to be working for a while now. I will always make sure to renew It or whatever long acting Endo thinks will be good at the time as needed. I had forgotten about it during the past 3 years or so.
However I am very nervous about ever having to use a long acting insulin again to be honest because I had terrible problems with lows when I was on them and I was very unstable with blood sugar swinging around even more than it does on my pump.
That physical feeling when my blood sugar starts to go up and I can tell I’m not getting the basal insulin is horrible and when I start to get the insulin again I can feel it and it is such a relief,
I agree about what they are doing with all electronic appliances etc. We have a stove top by Frigidaire that is pretty old now but the light in the oven went out about two years after it was purchased and I was told by several repair people, I think including Frigidaire, that you can’t replace the lightbulb in it, it has to be a replacement of the entire electronic panel. I’m not sure if this is really true because I was looking it up online again on YouTube and I found videos that showed you how to take the lightbulb out and ours does have the light bulb in the same position so I’m going to call them again.
I definitely would not be turning my dryer on using Wi-Fi, that sounds crazy to me. When we bought the last wm, it was one of the new ones that saves energy supposedly by using very little water, the problem was it put such a small amount of water in and took so long to wash anything and it was not cleaning the clothes. So I returned it and got a speed queen which is the closest I could find to the ancient GE that we had. The speed queen is pretty good, it’s not as good as the GE which had a feature where you could press a button to get some water to come out with lid open, to wash your hands off and it also had more flexibility in setting complex cycles. The speed queen fills the drum no problem. I wish I had known about their brands when we bought the latest dryer- I would’ve got their dryer as well. The one we ended up getting constantly turns itself off because it has a sensor in the front which can’t seem to tell whether the clothes are wet or dry and if there are a few clothes in or too many it turns off constantly. It also has a lint catcher that is almost impossible to clean out which is in the front under the door.
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I am glad you had no wait time and you are getting a new pump 
I’m still not sure what’s going on, but so far my pump seems to be OK so I’m assuming it’s the cartridges and I have to figure out which box and just throw them away I guess I hate to throw out supplies but I don’t want to go through this again. And all of the stress I forgot to write down which box I took the possibly bad cartridges out of.
If it’s sites and scar tissue and absorption then I am in for some real troubles I think. If it is the pump partially too I guess it’s going to fail again and it will be more obvious and then I have my toujeo until I get a new one. I had to replace the inset yesterday and I was so nervous about it but it was OK fortunately. I guess it’s gonna take a while for me to get over that nervousness.
My meezer guy is my first and first pb kitty. I’ve had all rescues but at least three of them were part Siamese. Somehow I thought that I would be able to train him to be a diabetic alert cat, because they are so smart, but he’s so crazy I can’t train him to do anything, he’s so dominant, he is very devoted to me. If I misbehave he nips at me and he will bite my ear and chew my hair too. 
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I drove 50 miles from home to buy our speed queen washer. I am pleased with it.
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