I was diagnosed with diabetes in 2003 and have been taking pills and one shot at bedtime. Now I have been told that my body does not produce insulin and need to take at least four shots a day. I have already been told that I can get a pump but Im not sure which one to get. My opions are the One Touch Ping or the Revel Minimed. I am leaning towards the Ping. Does anyone have any input or opinions!!!
Honestly, both have proven to be effective and comparable in quality of product etc… Long story short, whatever pump you figure has features that would benefit you better. I have a Ping, but thats because I wanted the remote feature, the water resistance. The Revel might incorporate these now. Either way, you cant go wrong. Arm yourself with Pumping Insulin by John Walsh and Thinking like a pancreas and you will be good to go. But, Animas’ customer service is better that Medtronics in my opinion. Just had to throw that in there…
I’m going with the ping…I like that it has a food directory and I can add my favorite foods in there as well…plus its water proof and the support that I have had received from customer service in answering my questions so far. I use the dexcom cgm and love it so far…plus eventually merge with the ping as one unit.
I should clarify my cust. service comment. Minimed wasn’t bad, it was just more work for me. I wanted some samples of infusion sets, and the person I talked to basically gave me a phone number of a local rep and said I needed to get a hold of them. They never called me back, and I tried twice. Animas gets the samples to me in like 2 days, no hassles, no questions asked.
I got the Ping in June. I wanted it because it was waterproof. I like having the remote and the food database. I also like that I can use other companies infusion sets with it and am not stuck with only ones made by Animas (I am not using their infusion sets). I don’t have experience with Minimed customer services, but every time I have called Animas with a question, they have been great. They also sent me samples when I asked without a problem.
I just had to make this same decision last week. I was fortunate to be able to try both pumps, and even though the Animas has a lot of added features, I decided to go with the Minimed. After trying both, I felt that MM was much easier to navigate, and I know this sounds stupid, but I liked their clip better. I think if you have a chance to actually try both pumps, or at least play with them, it would make your decision much easier.
I use the Minimed along with the CGM. I love it! And, I haven't had any problems with the service.
I have had a ping for a year and really like it. So, needless to say, I am going to be biased here. :)
Pros: Remote access - I can bolus and adjust other settings on the pump itself with the meter. The meter itself is a onetouch product and thus the strips were covered by my insurance company (and most insurance companies, I think). Hardy protective shell (it may have been dropped a few times, oopps). Color screen, decent battery life.
Cons: I cannot for the life of me get the stupid software to work with my mac. If I want to download the information from the meter I have to hook it up to my husband's windows machine, and even then I think we had a problem with it (he's running Windows 7) and had to download just the meter software without all the pump stuff on it. :-/ So, that aspect could be a lot better. To date (and the last time I checked) they haven't provided a fix yet.
I forget where I found it, but Google it, and you'll eventually find the updated driver for the cable, which will make it work on Windows 7. (The cable driver was updated and Animas isn't putting the new driver on the software CD, at least for now....)
I want to thank everyone that responded to my question it was very helpful. This seems to be a great site so far...
Vince