I've had pods fail in all sorts of different ways, but this morning I had one fail by no longer responding to the PDM -- i.e. can't establish radio contact. I'm talking with the PDM inches from the pod. Tried over and over to get status -- no dice. Fortunately I only have about 20U of insulin left in it, and it's nearing it's 3-day life.
Anyone else ever have this happen?
may be a silly thought here but is your battery life still good? I have not had that but the pass two pods, my last two actually. (yikes). just stopped working, no errors nothing. canula looks in but sugars going up up up, not sure where the cannula went but sure is not allowing the insulin in but Pdm is thinking it is. weird. I am sure they will replace your pod, sucks to have to waste the insulin though. Interested in what others have to say
I've not seen either one of those scenarios. Here's hoping they are not new trends!
Perhaps it’s a PDM issue. I would definitely report it to Insulet, and start the ball rolling if it happens again, at least there’s a record of it. I got my old pdm replaced once because when I changed batteries, I lost all my settings. It happened twice in a row. I know it’s not the same thing, but they were certainly good about replacing it.
That’s an interesting theory as well.
Definitely report it. Lack of battery life does sound like a possibility but Insulet will help you trouble shoot to identify the problem and you've gone on record in case of other failures. Been with Insulet since 2009.
Good idea, but I have about 3/4 left on the current PDM batteries, so that's not it.
BTW, the new pod worked as expected. The bad one just stopped "talking" radio with the PDM. The error is that screen with the little radio antenna graphic and text telling you to move the PDM closer.
Yeah, good advice, I'll call it in. I call in most of my "replacable" pod errors, but since this one didn't throw any error, it's not in my PDM records, and I would definitely have forgotten about it when I get around to calling my batch of failures for this shipment, in another 2 1/2 month or so (just got my latest shipment beginning of Sep).
I'm thinking battery problem on the pod, not the PDM.
Not entirely nuts for one of the 3 cells powering the pod to go bad. While batteries are pretty darn reliable, it's also true that they are not 100% reliable. Nothing is.
So that's my theory -- one of the cells in the pod was marginally defective, passed testing at the battery factory, then failed under load. The system would behave just as mine did with this failure mode.
Other components aso could have failed and produced these symptoms (RF chip, processor, etc.). however their failure rate is substantially lower than batteries typically.
If you turn on the PDM, press confirm and see a blank screen with just "Last BG", "Last Bolus" and "IOB" written on it followed (after about 3 seconds) by a blank screen with an animated radio antenna (triangle with a dot at the top) and the middle-button legend "Skip", followed (after 5 seconds) by the original screen with data and "Pod status not available" there is no radio communication with the pod, but the PDM is working.
Unfortunately the new PDM/pod has a shorter range than the old one, or it's more sensitive to low signal levels. If I get a communication error I touch the PDM to the pod while retrying to make sure. If that doesn't work it has to be a defective pod.
Insulet should definitely be consulted. I assume they would ask whether the pod is still delivering your basal - is it still clicking every few minutes? If it really is a battery problem it won't be and you need to replace it urgently (but then, your blood sugar will probably have said this very soon ;-) Even if it is apparently delivering the basal I would still want to replace it ASAP; I'd make an urgent call to Insulet and if I couldn't get through just replace it anyway.
John Bowler
I have had very, very few Pod failures (thank God), but when I do have a failure, I call it in immediately. Why wait? If the Pod fails in the priming phase (as some of mine have done in the past), then I usually do not get an error code. Insulet has been great about keeping track of how many replaceable Pods I have had and in replacing those that have not worked in my next shipment, error code or not. If something fails, I call it in the next day. As I said, though, I have had very few problems with Pods in the last 5+ years, so sometimes I will go through the entire three months' supply without problems. Why hang on to the Pods and then make a batch call, unless, of course, you really have a lot of failures in a three-month time frame.