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Subconcious Diabetes

I have had my new pump (the Animas Ping) for about 9 months now. When people ask how I like it compared to the MiniMed I am a little conflicted. There are some features that I truly enjoy, and others that I truly despise. This was similar to my feelings for the features onboard MiniMed as well.

However, this pump has some interesting side effects... 

It turns out, similarly to other middle-of-the-night activities (read: bathroom, ignoring snoring husband, finding a comfy position in the midst of a bed-hog wiener dog, etc), my body has moved “respond to insulin pump alarms” from a conscious activity to a subconscious activity. This is exactly what happened last night (which was not the first time, hence this event is now taking up space on 'le blog). Apparently at 11:55pm on September 8th I received and responded to a “Low Cartridge Alarm”. I say “apparently” because I have absolutely no recollection of this, but my pump's alarm history remembers!

Ok, so now I am asleep, I have “acknowledged” that I only have 20 units of insulin, and unlike the MiniMed pump I will not get a reoccurring “Low Cartridge Alarm”. ** I guess I should caveat here that I’m not the best at crosschecking my units remaining display, (whoops)**

Everything seems fine…breakfast bolus, daily basal rates, correction bolus, lunch bolus via remote glucometer...(crazy beeps ensue)…finally the pump commands my attention. What are all these beeps for?!?!?! That’s when I look down and see this screen:



Awesome. 1 whole unit left! Time to take out the battery (otherwise it will beep annoyingly all day!!) and settle in for an afternoon of pen injections. I can't be the only one this has happened to?!?!?!?!
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Comments

  1. Yup - I've been doing that and more dangerously, just turning off my CGM instead of dealing with a borderline low. I need to get more sleep!

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  2. I see you have moved to bright red nail polish sense moving. Dave

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  3. :::Checking battery now:::: Thanks for the online reminder!

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  4. same here. I sleep through all the alarms. I wonder if I got enough sleep (at least 5 hrs would be nice) if they'd wake me up or not :) probably not....

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  5. I have said it before and will say it again - Animas needs a second if not third alarm for low cartridge. Having two kids (one being a teenager) on Animas with only 1 low cartridge alarm is frustrating. My daughter has acknowledged the alarm at school, at home, at the mall, and in the middle of night without ever mentioning it to me or remembering to replace the cartridge. On more than one occasion I have received a call from school letting me know she is completely out of insulin or worse she has run out in the middle of the night (also acknowledging the alarms saying no delivery) only to wake up with high BS and ketones. UGH. My son is a bit more vigilant but has also neglected his hungry pump. Multiple alarms would be helpful. Something like - low cartridge alarm, very low cartridge alarm and your mom is gonna be really ticked off alarm. Glad you had syringes with you and you were able to stay safe.

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  6. Ahh, different features of different pumps... No pump today has every feature I want so I've been sticking to something I at least know and am used to.Not to mention the fact that Iove my pump - I'm one of few remaining Cozmo pumpers! One of my hesitations in switching to Animas is that I cannot set my low cartridge alarm at 5u like on the Cozmo. I don't want it to beep at me at 20u left - that's 2 thirds of a day of insulin left! Give me the information when it's actually usefull to me (something I can set on my own somewhere beween 20 and 1 unit and decide if I want one, two or multiple alarms!).
    I want my diabetes devices to be flexible enough to fit to my diabetes, not some pre-set standard features! Your issue is not user error or lack of crosschecking, but lack of flexibility in setting alarms.
    Ok, rant over. :)

    ReplyDelete

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