My doctor wants to put me on an insulin pump, and I’d like to know how users feel about theirs. Love it? Hate it? Put up with it? I’m rather nervous about having something inserted into my body 24/7. IVs, as you might guess, give me the heebie jeebies.
I don’t actually use one myself but my wife does. I wouldn’t say she ‘loves’ it…but I think she prefers it to the old style injections she was doing before. She wishes she could use a patch or better yet not have the problem at all…but that just isn’t in the cards atm. One thing is you really have to make sure you understand completely the training they give you…and you have to get good at setting the thing when you eat meals and such.
From my perspective (as someone who has to live with a person wearing it), I’ll say…the ticking noise sometimes keeps me up at night (though pretty much everything keeps me up at night, so grain of salt time). In addition it can be a bit awkward when trying to jump the bones of someone wearing one of these things.
However, she likes it better and I think it has helped a lot in controlling her sugar levels and such. Her doctor certainly thinks its a huge improvement.
-XT
Well, I’ll give a “not me, but…” post to keep this thing flying until the diabetics get in. My goddaughter has a pump, has had it for about a year now. She loves it. She finally feels like just another teenager without the need to bring along her sacred bag of diabetes stuff for even short trips out. She still checks her blood sugar, of course, and occasionally needs course corrections (she’s about thisfar from a brittle diabetic, mostly because she’s 15 and new at this and going through puberty and a stupid kid about diet sometimes), but overall she’s just over the moon about it. It’s not only helped medically (keeping her blood sugar more stable over time), but socially as well.
She can even go swimming with it, which shocked the heck out of me!
The only problem she’s had is with a broken door to the battery compartment - apparently it’s expected to break, as the manufacturer enclosed an extra one in the box. She lost the extra, and when her door broke, there was a bit of a panic, but they got it sorted out in short order. So if you get one, file that extra door somewhere safe.
I knew a guy in college who was an early adopter. This would have been in like 1988. The thing was the size of a deck of cards and I bet they’re much smaller now. He referred to it lovingly as F.P. for fucking pump but he much preferred it to the more structured life that he had to lead before he had it.
Hey, your thread sugar’s looking a little low. Let me give this a bump for ya!
I’m also interested in this thread. My older son has Type 1 diabetes and my father is an endocrinologist who’s been pestering my son to move to a pump for years. My son is flat not interested–partly due to the heebie-jeebie factor and partly because he’s a professional ball room dancer who competes and teaches. He believes even the smallest pump would show when he’s competing and he’s ignored suggestions that he could take it off while actually competing.
My dad’s whole point was that my son would have fantastic control. But honestly he’s got fantastic control NOW so I sort of see my son’s point.
/sits back to wait for real live users to appear.
I have a friend with Type 1 for close to 30 years. She is very positive about the pump. Message me if you want her e-mail address–she likes to talk about this, and can refer you to good topical message boards as well.
Well, while you wait for the real users, my wife has a quick connect/disconnect one. You essentially put in an end (with the needle part) and then the pump connects to that. So that you can disconnect it quickly, do whatever, then reconnect without having to put in a new needle every time. You still have to change out the site periodically of course…but for his dancing he would be able to take it off, dance, then put it back on pretty easily.
FWIW.
-XT
Yeah he knows. I think the real reason is he prefers to control by injection, plus the notion of the catheter just wigs him out.
I dunno, he’s got good control now but that’s also because he’s so very physically fit.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone in the ER because of one of these, not sure if that’s because we don’t have that many around, or they don’t have many problems, but I’s like to hear about problems people HAVE had. IANA diabetic nurse, but I expect steady state control is an improvement for long term complications
I’ll ask the wife to chime in later tonight, as she’s the actual pump wearer. A lot depends on the type of pump that you get as well. My wife will actually be switching (hopefully) to the Omni Pod fairly soon. It has the advantage of working wirelessly with the PDA/Monitor. So you test your sugar, then give yourself insulin remotely. The disadvantage is that it’s a bit bulkier to wear than the normal insulin pump entry site. However you’re not attached by the tubing to an external pump. My wife’s long term sugars have been much better since she’s been on the pump, but like everything else it’s up to you as an individual to still test regularly and adjust your flow as needed.
I will however recommend staying far away from any of the wireless continuouse monitors. We bought one (out of pocket) and it doesn’t work at all.
Oh, and be sure and pre-check with your insurance company to make sure they cover the pump, and how much they cover up to. They are very expensive.
Understood…it makes me uncomfortable too (I’ll try and get my wife to comment on it directly…I sent her a link to the thread so we’ll see). However, you can actually control your dosage with it…the programming lets you have quite a bit of control.
-XT
p.s. My wife wanted me to mention that the new one doesn’t make the clicking noise. It only makes noise when the alarm goes off.
Tell him to go take a look at one. When my wife first started looking into them, I was a tad icked out by that as well, but the actual tubbing that is inside you is tiny. Very small and very short.
Someone asked about potential problems. I can think of a few that we’ve had…not really problems, but things to consider.
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Your insurance. Make sure they cover the pump, and the supplies that you’ll need. Also because it’s such a large investment (they run between $5K and $8k) your insurance won’t want to let you change to something else. So do research to make sure exactly what you want before getting one.
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My wife has found that the insulin tends to have less of an effect once her pump site has been in the same location for a few days. So her numbers will run higher. So she’ll compensate by giving more insulin. No biggie, but then when she changes the site, she has to remember to give herself a tad less. We’ve had some very low numbers that resulted directly from her changing her site. Be sure and keep carefull track of your numbers for the first 6 months or so until you get used to it.
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It’s fairly easy to acidentally pull the site out of your body. So make sure you always have another site kit handy. We keep one in each car, and she has one at work. That way you can change it if you need to.
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Some pumps are water resistant, but not all. So check before going in the water. My wife had one that was advertised as water resistant, but she got it wet once and it promptly stopped working. The company replaced it with no hassle, and admitted that it really wasn’t water resistant at all.
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Where to wear it. The pumps are fairly small, but you do have to figure out where to put it. My wife has a pouch that snaps to her bra under her arm. Which is fine except for at night. No bra means that she has to find someplace else to keep it close to her. They make spandex leg pouch things that you can get, but she didn’t find that comfortable.
Upside: She’s never had an issue going through airport security. Even in foriegn countries. So no worries on that end.
Another spouse checking in here. Mr. Jeeves has had a pump for about 5 years, and it has changed his life. I was worried about it at first, because I pictured this permanent shunt looking type thing 
Instead the injection site is just a tiny bump, and doesn’t get in the way of intimate relations at all. Highly recomended if you can get insurance to pay for the supplies, since that is the killer cost.
Oh, and when we got mugged a few weeks ago, the idiots tried to take the pump until I yelled that he was diabetic and taking it would kill him I thought that a little exaggeration wouldn’t hurt considering the high replacement cost. A second on always keeping an extra insertion kit with you. We went to a weekend wedding about 5 hours away once, and the insertion site got pulled out as soon as we got up there, and we almost had to drive home except for one that Mr. Jeeves kept as emergency backup in the car.
My sister, who has had one for over a decade, would fight to the death any doctor who tried to take hers away.
The newer models are supposed to be able to auto-regulate your actual dose, tasting your blood on-the-fly and adding more insulin if you’re getting too sweet or cutting back on reg scheduled administrations if you’re in low bloodsugar mode. She doesn’t have that yet but it still saves her a lot of hassle.
One of my best friends has one, and swears by it. Big thumbs up.
Hmmmm, looks like I need to ask my insurance company which ones they’ll buy for me. If any. Yikes!
Thanks, everyone.
Checked with the wife last night. The only thing she added was to make sure you think about the fact that the pump is a better replacement for what your pancrease would normally be producing for your body. It gives you a continual dosage throughout the day, rather than three or four spikes during the day. Also it’s much less obtrusive. It’s nothing to reach over and hit the button once or twice during meal time to give herself some extra insulin, rather than having to pull out the syring and insulin bottle.
Also, while you’re checking with your insurance, do some research on the different companies. I can’t remember the company, but the last pump my wife had before her current one had a 2 or 3 year count-down. Once that internal clock had counted down to zero, the pump became inactive and had to be replaced by the company. I’m sure it’s their way of keeping a constant revenue stream, but it’s a pretty shitty thing to do to the end user. Especially since they didn’t mention that before hand. It was only after it started the countdown of doom (about a month out) that we called and found out about that nifty little “feature”.
I’m type 2 diabetic but I was on an insulin pump for my last two pregnancies, after having been on multiple daily injections for my first pregnancy.
The difference was like night and day. I had way fewer episodes of hypoglycemia, I was able to sleep in on the weekends if I wanted to (instead of having to get up to eat breakfast at a specific time to coincide with my long-acting insulin peak), and best of all, I didn’t have to carry syringes around in my sunglasses case if I wanted to go out to eat at a restaurant. My control was much, much, much better on the pump.
I’m not currently on insulin therapy, but I still have the pump upstairs ready to go if insulin ever becomes necessary for me in the future again. I have a MiniMed Paradigm and really like it.
PM me or ask questions here if you want more details. I am very pro-pump and would recommend them to anyone who needs to use insulin.