- Messages
- 4,685
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
- Pump
Nearly 18 months since I first hooked up on saline and 14 months since I began using the pump in earnest, I have taken it off and boxed it up. I have an appointment tomorrow and next Thursday with my hospital team to review what to do next, but I just had to stop.
No disrespect to everyone who has made the pump work for them, but it was not working for me. I would still recommend people to try it, since it does produce excellent results for many people.
My main feeling is one of relief and overwhelming freedom. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted. I can walk around my own house naked for the first time in a year, go to the toilet without needing four hands. Nothing sticking into me. No more barriers to intimate relations. My girlfriend is relieved too and now admits the pump was always a problem in sex and even just in sleeping together. Trooper that she is, never mentioned it until now, but I could tell. And I am greatly relieved about work, having had a lousy experience of people at work treating me like a freak for having this semi hidden, but in the end obvious, medical device attached.
With no pump to log all my data I am back on my phone all the time, and setting test reminders on my meter. This is odd after a year of the pump handling all of that in one place. I'm also doing manual calculations of IOB, which is somewhat haphazard. I knew I would miss IOB. I need to find an app or meter with a decent IOB function. Of course it will never be as safe and accurate as a pump's IOB, since the pump is the delivery system and never "forgets" to add a bolus to IOB.
I am back on Lantus x2 doses, 10/14 split at 0000 and 0800. I can already see it doesn't handle my dawn rise and wakeup rise as well as the pump, which is to be expected. Maybe I will try x2 Levemir.
For boring reasons I'm injecting Novorapid in pens rather than Humalog as I had in the pump. Just because I have stocks of it and no Humalog cartridges. I probably will get some because it looks like, as I suspected, Novorapid is less effective, lower carb ratio and correction ratio for me, than Humalog. And/or it's just the lower efficiency of MDI delivery vs CSCI (pumping). Humalog cartridges would eliminate one variable so probably a good idea. Even though I hate wasting insulin.
One good result at my review a few weeks ago is the consultant approved me for Metformin. For years I've argued and been refused. This time I was pushing at an open door. Maybe the policy (at Guy's and St Thomas's) is changing. I will fill the scrip for that once my MDI regime has settled down again. I need to do basal testing this week, then confirm my ratios. Same old same old eh.
I'm actually enjoying seeing my logging data and analysis in real time on a phone app. While it was convenient to have all my data entered in one place on the pump, I had to upload and use a PC to actually see the data. So that's an improvement. It was infuriating that I would enter data into the Vibe and then couldn't just scroll back to see data I had entered.
I am not sure if this is a one month pump holiday, or if it's Goodbye. I will decide that after talking to the hospital team.
The pump failed to stop my long slide in HBa1c that has been going on for a good 5 years now. I'm not blaming the pump, it's a powerful tool. I blame the operator for the lack of results. But, given the lack of results, a pump is a massive inconvenience and pain in the bum (often literally), if it's not delivering a clear benefit. Which for me it wasn't.
The one thing I would say against the pump, which has to be balanced against the clear benefits many people get, is the much lower overall system reliability compared to pens (MDI). There is very little go wrong with MDI. Component failures are very rare, and low impact. Pump system failures are far more common and much higher impact. Harder to detect, harder to troubleshoot and resolve. There are just so many more components in the system (end to end) than in MDI, and each of the components is more complex and more likely to fail. It's basic systems engineering, it's predictable that failure will be more common.
And I think it was the psychological toll of the constant fear and repeated incidence of system failure, the stress of trying to understand which component had failed and how to prevent it, that in the end has worn me down. My skin is a battlefield of scars but my mind feels similar. Taking the pump off feels like a massive relief from all that stress and worry. For now at least.
No disrespect to everyone who has made the pump work for them, but it was not working for me. I would still recommend people to try it, since it does produce excellent results for many people.
My main feeling is one of relief and overwhelming freedom. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted. I can walk around my own house naked for the first time in a year, go to the toilet without needing four hands. Nothing sticking into me. No more barriers to intimate relations. My girlfriend is relieved too and now admits the pump was always a problem in sex and even just in sleeping together. Trooper that she is, never mentioned it until now, but I could tell. And I am greatly relieved about work, having had a lousy experience of people at work treating me like a freak for having this semi hidden, but in the end obvious, medical device attached.
With no pump to log all my data I am back on my phone all the time, and setting test reminders on my meter. This is odd after a year of the pump handling all of that in one place. I'm also doing manual calculations of IOB, which is somewhat haphazard. I knew I would miss IOB. I need to find an app or meter with a decent IOB function. Of course it will never be as safe and accurate as a pump's IOB, since the pump is the delivery system and never "forgets" to add a bolus to IOB.
I am back on Lantus x2 doses, 10/14 split at 0000 and 0800. I can already see it doesn't handle my dawn rise and wakeup rise as well as the pump, which is to be expected. Maybe I will try x2 Levemir.
For boring reasons I'm injecting Novorapid in pens rather than Humalog as I had in the pump. Just because I have stocks of it and no Humalog cartridges. I probably will get some because it looks like, as I suspected, Novorapid is less effective, lower carb ratio and correction ratio for me, than Humalog. And/or it's just the lower efficiency of MDI delivery vs CSCI (pumping). Humalog cartridges would eliminate one variable so probably a good idea. Even though I hate wasting insulin.
One good result at my review a few weeks ago is the consultant approved me for Metformin. For years I've argued and been refused. This time I was pushing at an open door. Maybe the policy (at Guy's and St Thomas's) is changing. I will fill the scrip for that once my MDI regime has settled down again. I need to do basal testing this week, then confirm my ratios. Same old same old eh.
I'm actually enjoying seeing my logging data and analysis in real time on a phone app. While it was convenient to have all my data entered in one place on the pump, I had to upload and use a PC to actually see the data. So that's an improvement. It was infuriating that I would enter data into the Vibe and then couldn't just scroll back to see data I had entered.
I am not sure if this is a one month pump holiday, or if it's Goodbye. I will decide that after talking to the hospital team.
The pump failed to stop my long slide in HBa1c that has been going on for a good 5 years now. I'm not blaming the pump, it's a powerful tool. I blame the operator for the lack of results. But, given the lack of results, a pump is a massive inconvenience and pain in the bum (often literally), if it's not delivering a clear benefit. Which for me it wasn't.
The one thing I would say against the pump, which has to be balanced against the clear benefits many people get, is the much lower overall system reliability compared to pens (MDI). There is very little go wrong with MDI. Component failures are very rare, and low impact. Pump system failures are far more common and much higher impact. Harder to detect, harder to troubleshoot and resolve. There are just so many more components in the system (end to end) than in MDI, and each of the components is more complex and more likely to fail. It's basic systems engineering, it's predictable that failure will be more common.
And I think it was the psychological toll of the constant fear and repeated incidence of system failure, the stress of trying to understand which component had failed and how to prevent it, that in the end has worn me down. My skin is a battlefield of scars but my mind feels similar. Taking the pump off feels like a massive relief from all that stress and worry. For now at least.
