OH THE HORROR!!! Malfunctions galore.

Old post from February......


The old saying "Anything that can go wrong, will." rang very true today. TWICE!!! I woke up for class this morning and as always, went to promptly check my blood sugar.

Strip in the meter. Blank screen.

Held the power button. Nothing.

Changed the batteries. Nada. Zilch. Ditto.

Luckily for me, I am an incredibly intelligent human being with just a dash of OCD, so I always carry a backup. OneTouch UltraMini to the rescue!!! I mean it's probably the most boring, featureless meter out there but in the end, it does what it's supposed to. 

Here's where it gets fun. 

After class I got back to my room and went to call Animas Tech Support. As I was taking the skin off my pump to read the toll free number listed on back, the bottom corner of the keypad pulled away from the pump. Well damn.

My conversation with the Animas rep went a little like this…

Rep: "Hello Animas tech support, how can I help you."

Me: "I swear I'm not abusing my pump but everything is broken!!"

Rep: "……….could you elaborate?"

Long story short, both my meter and my pump are getting replaced within about a week. In the meantime the pump is still functioning and I shall be using my backup meter. 

Intro to Pumping Class on Thursday + Choosing My Pump

        Yes my little sugar free niblets, I am officially on the road to becoming a pumper of insulin. On Thursday I am scheduled in an introduction to pumping class at the children's hospital in my area. It's pretty ridiculous how excited I am. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I did a complete turnaround in my stance on insulin pumps. I hated the idea of being connected to something. I quickly got over that though when I saw all the benefits (oh yeah and all the cool kick butt features some of them have). So below I decided to include the pros and cons of the insulin pumps available in Canada right now that I considered and why I'm choosing the one I am.

OMNIPOD

Pros:
-No tubing
-Sophisticated PDM (personal diabetes manager)
-Don't have to see needle
-Cheaper than many other pumps

Cons:
-Wasted insulin if the "pod" fails
-Inability to disconnect
-Stranded if the PDM is lost
-Bulky under tight clothing/ no ability to relocate pump once attached


MEDTRONIC VEO

Pros:
-Integrated CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring)
-Customizable Skins
-Carelink

Cons:
-Not waterproof
-Low Resolution Screen


ANIMAS PING

Pros:
-Waterproof
-Meter-Remote (ability to deliver insulin using glucose meter without needing to remove pump from wherever it is stashed)
-Colour Screen (in Canada there is a high resolution colour screen on both the pump and meter remote)
-Carb database (store foods along with their carb values in the meter. Eliminates guesswork when calculating carbs)
-Customizable alert songs (that's just cool)
-Company will lend you a spare pump if you go on vacation in case something happens to yours

Cons:
-No CGM
-Limited options for skins


So by what I've written you can probably hazard a guess as to which one I've decided on. Animas Ping baby! For a while it was a little bit of a toss up between the Veo and the Ping (Sorry Omnipod, but I knew you weren't going to work for me after about five minutes). I really like the idea of continuous glucose monitoring especially since I will be at university next year. I would love to be able to catch any possible nighttime lows and know my BG and any given time. But in the end, I could just see myself using more of the features on the Ping (e.x I'm a lifeguard/ swimming instructor. The waterproof feature was kind of a no brainer.) I'm still hoping and crossing my fingers too that the stand alone cgm system Dexcom will be made available in Canada soon. Happy pumping everyone!!!