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My Backup Plan When My Insulin Pump Fails

The other night I was up late working and needed to rewind my pump and fill up a new reservoir. I knew the battery was low, but I was hoping I could just make it to the morning because I was in my office where I didn’t have any spare batteries.

While in the middle of rewinding the pump alerted me that the battery was dead and the pump needed to be restarted. Once I restarted, I tried to rewind the pump again, but I could tell that it already finished rewinding.

I attempted to rewind and it would get another area and need to be restarted.

This just kept happening over and over and over.

At that time, I knew the pump was having some sort of motor issue and was done.

This was at about 1:45 AM.

The back up plan was needed.

Luckily, I always try and keep some form of long-acting insulin at home. I usually get this from my endo as samples that haven’t been used and she needs to get rid of.

I took a lower dose of what I would normally take for basal insulin because I knew I had a lot of insulin on board at the time.

First thing in the morning, I called Medtronic and went through the troubleshooting and determined that indeed the pump was not going to work. Since the pump is under warranty a new one would be sent out to me overnight and I would receive it by noon the next day. That’s almost a 24 hour turnaround time.

Replacement MiniMed 630G Insulin PumpPretty amazing.

The point of the story here is that we all must have a backup plan if using an insulin pump.

Do you have one?

Do you have any long-acting insulin? Do you have your pump settings saved? Do you know how much basal insulin you need?

If you don’t have a plan yet, then I highly recommend speaking with your doctor or healthcare professional in order to create an insulin pump failure backup plan.

As I was finishing this up, I heard the horn.

There was the big brown truck with my replacement pump.

Time to get connected again.

Here’s a link to the first unboxing of the MiniMed 630G, this should bring back memories.

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One thought to “My Backup Plan When My Insulin Pump Fails”

  1. I love Medtronic overnight service. The differences is I would not have waited. I call immediately when the pump fails. They always take care of things almost immediately, not if they could just make an unbreakable device.

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