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Category: Omnipod

Starting our 4-Year Old on an Omnipod

Starting our 4-Year Old on an Omnipod

Chris Stocker

Yesterday, I wrote about our decision to start using an insulin pump as opposed to multiple daily injections. If you would like to learn more about why we made that particular decision, please go check out yesterday’s post.

Once we knew that we wanted her to be on an insulin pump, we needed to figure out which one. I pretty much already had an idea which one we were leaning towards.

We had a few options to choose from:

  1. Medtronic
  2. Tandem
  3. Omnipod

Medtronic

I personally used a Medtronic for 13 of my 16 years with diabetes. It was the first pump that I started on in December 2004 after my diagnosis in April of 2004 (couple days away from 16 years since diagnosis).

I was very comfortable with the Medtronic insulin pump and how it worked and how to use it. I also liked their low suspend technology that could detect a low blood sugar coming on and automatically shut the insulin delivery off.

However, that would require using their CGM, and I wrote last week about our reasoning for choosing Dexcom immediately for our CGM of choice.

The last, main reason, was I know our daughter. I know she runs around a lot and also bumps into plenty of things. I have also walked past a door and got my tubing snagged and had an infusion set rip out, and let me tell you…. it hurts!

Tubing was a no-go for us.

Tandem

Even though Tandem has tubing, it is integrated with Dexcom and offers their Basal-IQ technology, which was pretty appealing to me. If you’re not sure what technology I am talking about, you can check out an old post I wrote on it (and I’m also going to link to their site because they have had a bunch of updates since I last wrote about it).

In the end, we just knew we needed something without tubing.

So, that led to the choice of Omnipod.

Omnipod

After my 13 years with Medtronic, I chose to use MDI for a year. It worked out pretty well for me. I wrote about my decision to give up an insulin pump for MDI in the past.

When I decided that I was done with MDI (again), I wanted to go back onto an insulin pump, but I felt like it was time to give up Medtronic. Primarily because I switched over to Dexcom during my year of MDI.

I decided to use an Omnipod.

I tell you that story, to further explain why we chose Omnipod.

90% of the decision was because of it not having any tubing. It was a pretty clear cut decision for us to make.

90% of the decision was because of it not having any tubing. It was a pretty clear cut decision for us to make. Click To Tweet

The remaining 10% was a little bit of the fact that I currently used (and still use) asn Omnipod, so there was the comfort level of knowing how to troubleshoot it if needed.

Daddy, Daughter Diabetes Bond

daddy daughter omnipod

The other was purely mental.

My daughter has seen me put an Omnipod on 100 times. She’s even helped me do it. She decorates them by coloring or putting stickers on them.

She would love to be just like Daddy and share this bond with him…..right?

Well, that’s what we were hoping.

The first few times we put a new Pod on, I would do mine just before so that she could see me do it and get comfortable with it.

Six Months Later

We are now over 6 months with the Pod and we absolutely love it. It can still be a battle every so often on putting a new one one, but we know these struggles are going to happen. It simply comes with the territory of having a child with type 1 diabetes.

I will write in a future blog post about our tips for keeping the Omnipod on, how we take it off, how we rotate the sites and many more cool ideas that we have learned over the last 12 months of managing not only my own Type 1 Diabetes, but also our daughter’s.

I hope you are enjoying this content, if so, please leave a comment below or go share the love on Facebook and Instagram.

Insulin Pen vs Insulin Pump for our Child with Type 1 Diabetes

Insulin Pen vs Insulin Pump for our Child with Type 1 Diabetes

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

When our daughter was first diagnosed, we started on insulin pens. This is also how I started giving insulin injections when I was diagnosed in 2004. The pens are good for training and learning the basics of diabetes and forcing yourself to do math and think about sliding scales and correction doses.

In the long-run, for our family at least, we knew we wanted our daughter to be on an insulin pump.

Discussing with Our Daughter

This is something that we discussed with our daughter also so that she didn’t feel like it was being forced on her, but it was a simple conversation with her.

4 shots a day or one “shot” once every 3 days.

Her answer was pretty quick.

Giving her insulin early on after her diagnosis was difficult at times. We didn’t want to make too many changes to our life. We wanted her to continue to do the same things she was doing before she was diagnosed.

Eating Out

One of those things was eating out. We ate out usually 2-3 times a week. Usually one night for dinner, and 1-2 times a week for lunch. We did this because we were always out on the weekends and then we try to enjoy one night out a week together as a family.

Eating at a restaurant was tough because we never knew exactly how many carbs she was going to eat. We would look at the menu beforehand, and by before I mean, my wife would be looking on her phone in the car about 5 minutes before we pulled into a restaurant because it took us 30 minutes debating on what restaurant we were going to go to.

We also could never tell when the food would come out, so pre-bolusing was tough, but that is the same no matter if you are doing MDI or using an insulin pump. The difference is that we could just give her insulin at the table and not have to go to the bathroom and leave the table.

If she wanted to be able to eat a little bit more than what we initially bolused for or if we decided to all share a dessert, we could do it much easier with an insulin pump. It wasn’t going to require the trauma or getting another shot, but a simple few button pushes on the insulin pump.

Corrections

Another reason we wanted to use an insulin pump was for corrections. We found ourselves waiting until the next meal time in order to give a correction. If it was a large correction, we would do it, but we avoided giving extra shots as much as possible.

Waiting until the next meal to correct a blood sugar that was not too high, but something that we would correct now with an insulin pump, was not good management. Her A1C was higher and we knew we couldn’t continue on that path for the long run.

Snacking

Luckily, even before diabetes, our daughter was not much of a snacker. She didn’t just randomly eat throughout the day. She ate breakfast, lunch and dinner and sometimes would have a little snack somewhere throughout the day. But, she never just randomly was given food to eat all throughout the day.

That was a big plus for being on MDI, because we didn’t need to bolus any additional shots.

On her insulin pump, if she wants a snack, it’s easier to give a snack. Now, we don’t just give a snack because we can quickly bolus for it, we still follow our same rules. But, it is easier to go for ice cream after the park or having some cracker and cheese between lunch and dinner.

Check back for future blog posts on how living with an insulin pump has been for her.

Please go follow along at Facebook or Instagram

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Patient Device Rights

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

It’s unfortunate, but our healthcare is primarily controlled by insurance companies. If the insurance companies are acting nice, then it can be our medical team. What about the rights of the patient?

I live with Type 1 Diabetes. This means that I live with a disease that does not go away. It takes zero breaks. It is working on me 24/7/365, so the only way to combat it is to fight back 24/7/365.

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My Initial Thoughts on Omnipod – 1 Week of Usage

Chris Stocker 3 Comments

I’ve been using my Omnipod for one week at this point and I wanted to collect and share my initial thoughts on Omnipod after one week of using.

Last Tuesday I had my endo appointment and afterwards had my Omnipod training in order for me to start using the Omnipod. I’ve had the Omnipod box at home for a little over a week and before I went to the appointment, I opened everything up and did a little set up video for you that you can see later this week over on my YouTube Channel.

Going into this endo appointment, I already knew that my A1C was going to be one of the highest it’s been since being diagnosed. How did I know this? Simple, my Dexcom 90 day average glucose report from Clarity told me. I have a full post later this week dedicated to just my A1C.

My weight was actually up 3 pounds since the last time I saw him in August. Not what I was hoping for. Everything else from the appointment went well. My blood pressure was perfect, as were all of my important labs. When I first came into the office, my heart rate was a bit high at 115, however, after the doctor did it again about 10 minutes later, it was down to about 85, which was better.

I do have a problem with high heart rates throughout the day, which is part of the major need to lose weight. Speaking of, I did a search on my site here, which I launched in 2009, and I’ve been talking about losing weight since about 2010 and all I’ve done since then is gain about 60 pounds. I’d say that’s not good.

Directly after my endo appointment, I was scheduled to meet with the nurse to do my Omnipod training.

When it comes to training for insulin pumps, I typically already know how 90% of it works. I don’t typically know the troubleshooting tricks and that’s what I like to learn in these trainings. However, when I go into the trainings, I act like I’ve never seen an insulin pump before and let the trainer do what they need to do. I do tell them that I am pretty advanced with technology and understand diabetes and was on a pump for 13 years. This way, they don’t waste either of our time talking about what a bolus is or temp basal, etc.

I understand it.

I’ve watched videos of people filling their Pods, but I never actually did it myself, so I asked for help to ensure that I was doing it the right way. I went through the setup process and once I was ready to put the Pod on, I decided to go on my left arm. Of course, when I put it on, I couldn’t see the viewing window, so couldn’t tell if the cannula was in properly, but I guess time would tell anyway.

My Unique Omnipod Insulin Management

Something that I have written about since I first started writing is the amount of insulin I use and how much of it I go through. I am on a 1:4 (insulin:carb) ratio and my average basal rate is about 2.5.

That’s a ton of insulin.

In order to not have to change out my pod every single day or every 36 hours, I recommended to my endo that I stay on Tresiba for my basal insulin and just utilize a 0.1 basal rate on my Omnipod. If I see that at certain times I may need an increased basal, then I do that. I don’t see a lot of lows, so the need to decrease my basal is not something that I utilize often.

However, if the Tresiba is already in my system and I’m low, then I correct the low, and if it becomes a pattern, I lower my Tresiba.

As of now, it’s worked pretty damn good.

Big Bolus Injections

I’ve still not cut out all horrible foods, so when I have eaten a high carb meal, I’ve injected insulin from an insulin pen for the extra dosage as opposed to taking the insulin from the Omnipod. I’ve decided to do this, so that I don’t dump too much insulin into the infusion site too fast.

Also, I’ve already had one Pod start to leak insulin because I dosed too much at one single time.

Lesson Learned on First Pod

The Pod that I inserted at the training session only lasted 24 hours. The next night at dinner time, I needed to take about 20 units of insulin. So, I dialed up the 20 units on my Omnipod PDM and hit the bolus button. The PDM started to do its thing and deliver the bolus.

Next thing you know, my arm felt a little wet and I smelled that awful smell of liquid gold, aka insulin.

I did the ole rub the site, then smell (did this far too often with Medtronic, which is one of the primary reasons I ultimately stopped using a pump), and I could smell it. Soon after, my wife said that she could smell it from where she was sitting.

I did the first thing that I always do when something happens, I went straight to Twitter. I wasn’t complaining, I was more looking for a solution, and luckily I found some.

One idea was to extend the bolus of anything over 3.0 units. So, that’s what I’ve been doing and it seems to have been working pretty well so far. I’ve had 2 other Pods on and neither has leaked since extended boluses out over 1 hour, on average.

I have my next follow up appointment already in a little over a week. My endo wanted me back in 2 weeks to look at Dexcom data to determine if we are going to stay with using Tresiba 100% for my basal insulin or if we are going to make it 75% of the basal insulin, plus 25% basal coming from the Omnipod.

Diabetes is all about testing, looking at the data, making an educated guess and testing all over again until you find the perfect management solution for yourself.

Overall, my initial thoughts on the Omnipod are great. I must say, I do hate the PDM. That is my only downside and flaw to the Omnipod system. The buttons are hard when I try to push them, which could be from it being so new and needing to break the buttons in.

Not being able to utilize a touchscreen for me is just brutal. Here’s the looking forward to the Omnipod Dash system.

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My Omnipod Has Been Delivered

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Towards the end of the year last year, I’d say the final 10 days of the year, I went from thinking about going back on a pump to somehow being on the phone with Omnipod ordering my new insulin pump. It all happened pretty quickly, but here’s the story.

I recently wrote about my thoughts of going back on an insulin pump. I was torn between a t:slim and an Omnipod. I’m not going to go into full details of that thought process again, you can read the article.

The final decision for me came down to the fact that I have loved not being connected to a device with a wire for the last year after going back to MDI. I still do not want to be connected to a wire. So, I sat down and outweighed the two most important options, Basal IQ from Tandem or no tubing from Omnipod.

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