Reasons for going on a pump?

zicksi101

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Hi all, some advice please. I was wondering if there's a good source of information with the reasons for going on a pump?

My consultant has suggested I may need one to improve control, because I have some areas of lipohypertrophy and basically it's becoming difficult to find a site to inject on that isn't actually affected by this after 20+ years on MDI. Having never been on a pump before, and without much information on this subject, I'm not sure I fully appreciate the benefits and why it would be used.

I am currently injecting in a harder to reach area (the reason I haven't used the site often) and am now seeing significant improvements in how quickly the quick acting insulin is working. It's now taking 1 hour for BG to come down to a reasonable level whereas before it was taking 3 hours. Note that I'm not talking about it being say 8.5 a few hours after injecting it's more like 15, then 5 hours after injecting it will have dropped to for example 4.5, so I do think lipohypertrophy has been causing problems as the outcome of the QA injection often hasn't happened by the next meal time.
 

zicksi101

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Great article, thank you! :)

I guess it's looking like the main benefit would be the fewer injections in my case, as it's one less thing to cause lipohypertrophy. Good to see the article doesn't suggest the pump to be a silver bullet though.

For what it's worth, the best way to control things in recent times has been to reduce carbs in the diet to 80g a day. Essentially it was plan B when carb counting and bolusing for the carbs just didn't work as it should have, so I'm open minded to the possibility that there's a dietary solution too.
 

MushyPeaBrain

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My reason for going on a pump was primarily my son. After 30 odd years as a brittle diabetic I had got my control as tight as possible on MDI but my HBa1c was always around 8. When I began the process of adoption my diabetes was a big concern for social services. My consultant suggested a pump and said it could easily give me an extra decade of life expectancy based on tighter control. My control has never been so good since pumping and it means I will be around longer for my children hopefully. I also had injection damage around stomach so avoid that now and pump elsewhere.
 

noblehead

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Although not as severe as your experience with lipohypertrophy I was experiencing issues with my injection sites prior to moving over to a pump and this was one of the reasons why my consultant thought that a pump would beneficial.

I change my Pod (I'm using the Omnipod pump) every 3 days where as before I'd be injecting 12-16 times in the same time period, the difficulty is keeping away from sites where problems exist just the same as it is on injections so it gives the sites time to recover, up to now I've had a couple of occasions where I've had poor insulin absorption and had to change the pod before the 3 days was up, but overall I've seen a big improvement.

Have a good look at the following, its has a lot of information on who is eligible for a pump and what the process involves:


http://www.inputdiabetes.org.uk/
 
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tim2000s

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My consultant has also suggested that a pump would be a good idea based on lipoatrophy that he can feel. My next appointment in June is to possibly review this.
 

Flowerpot

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424
Type of diabetes
Type 1
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Pump
I've used a pump for about 16 years now , I started to use one due to night time hypos but I also had two areas of lipohypertrophy on either side of my stomach. These haven't altered since changing from MDI and remain a no go zone for pump cannulas. I haven't developed any new areas of damage since using cannulas although I have got some areas of poor absorption due to overuse as I'm partially sighted and tend to insert cannulas on the side I can see.

Only needing to insert 1 cannula every 3 days has reduced areas of potential damage for me and the pump has given me great control whilst allowing me to reduce my daily insulin needs by approximately one third.
 

zicksi101

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Messages
113
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Thanks all for the advice, very helpful. Like you @MushyPeaBrain my HbA1c's have been around 8 point something in recent times despite my efforts.

Only exception to that was a 7.7 shortly after doing a half marathon which was a bit of an improvement, and that makes sense because the running was bringing the BGs down more quickly at certain times during the training.

It does sound like a pump is worth trying, I've got some appointments with DSN and another consultant being lined up so I'll be able to discuss things more fully with them quite soon.
 
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