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Animas Vibe - pump is not primed

ronialive said:
who did you get to fund them as I need to have them to get my control sorted and only earning £700 a month to run a family I just cannot afford to self fund. I am going to ask clinic about it next appt
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No offence meant but that's my business. It has nothing to do with the NHS at all. I have just over £400/month to live on and managed to fund it was a struggle though.
 
I would suggest anyone having problems like these gets their DSN to arrange a meeting with the pump manufacturer rep.
 


Hi

On the white instruction sheet that is packed in the box containing the cartridges,there are instructions for filling the cartridges...... its in the 3rd column at the very top.......
..........................................
Use the blue handle (turquoise do da) to "cycle" the cartridge by sliding the plunger back and forth 2 or 3 times. Do not over-cycle or twist the plunger (shame Animas didn't think to show pictures of this)
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As cartridges go, the Animas are easier to expel air bubbles from compared to the AccuChek ones but the lubricant and plunger movement is far better on the AccuChek than on the Animas. Animas plunger movement is very stiff so its probably best to not re use them too much and sling in the re cycle bin after 2 times.


Re filling the cartridge........the Animas rep that I and a group of others saw were shown injecting air upwards into a vial and then pulling back the plunger to withdraw the insulin (just like the old days of using a syringe to withdraw from a vial) This works ok but can cause the blue handle to come ungripped. I moaned to my partner how difficult it was to pull the plunger back without the blue handle coming off and he said to use the large black o'ring seal from the top of a throw away cartridge and push the rubber o ring down into one of grip slots Voila.... the blue handle stays gripped nicely in the cartridge and doesnt pull out thanks to the rubber.

The other way according to the Animas cartridge instruction sheet is to inject air downwards into the vial and then very quickly turn the vial up the other way (invert) so that the vial as at top and then the force of air will make the cartridge fill without too much blue handle plunger pulling. The downside to injecting air downwards is to not use a full vial of insulin to inject air downwards in to. Too much air injected downwards without quickly inverting the vial might make the cartridge fall apart with insulin going everywhere due to the force of air. There will also be a build up of air causing the rubber stopper to bulge and until the air is released (push disposable pen needle without the cover on into the bulging rubber and hear the hiss of air) cartridge filling will be difficult as there will always be a vacuum of air preventing insulin being able to be pushed through the tubing from the cartridge causing the occlusion alarm to sound.

In many ways, it doesnt matter which way the cartridge is filled so just do what works the best for you. I tend to keep my vials in the fridge so insulin doesnt get too warm and go off after 30 days. The air bubbles are easy to flick to the top once the carttridges are at a room temp of about 24C or at body temp for a few hours. I justt attach a new tube to the cartridge and using the blue handle, push the plunger up a tiny bit to make the bubble go in to the tube and then load cartridge in pump to make the piston move to the correct position and then prime to push insulin through to the end of tube.

Hope this helps any new Vibers starting off with the pump and not sure what to do and confused
 
Thanks for that, @iHs

Really useful. I'm finding the whole cartridge filling very confusing. I've just got the Vibe and it's the first pump I've ever had to fiddle about with cartridges for. My old pump just took normal pen cartridges that I simply dropped into the end of the pump. I'm paranoid about messing up the Vibe cartridge filling so your advice was really welcome.
 
@azure

Good luck with the Vibe.......just remember that it only has 12 basal rate time slots whereas the Diestronic/AccuCheks have 24. It takes about 2.5hrs for the real effect of basal rate change to start showing in bg levels using Novorapid and Ive found that pressing on the basal rate change buttons just once is enough to make my bg change by about 3mmol so gently bently does it and remember to write the old rates down first before changing to new ones. I use an Animas pump bg log book to write down bg levels, carb eaten, bolus, basal, temp basal etc and theres also space to write down the food eaten too. I dont use Diasend that much as I am better writing stuff down and then I can see when things are going pear shaped and Ive then got to make changes.
 
Thank you @iHs

I prefer to write things down too. I'm using Hypurin Porcine Neutral.Thanks for the warning about the basal rate change buttons! It's really helpful to get info from people actually using the pump in the real world. No doubt I'll have more questions once I get going on it! It's a big change after my old pump. Just little things like having to fill and change the insulin cartridges are strange to me. Because the pen cartridges are glass, I could leave them in my pump for a couple of weeks until they ran out.

I think I'll feel more relaxed when I get a schedule of what to do and when. My brain's addled by it all at the moment!
 
I use bovine neutral in my Vibe I'm one of those that fills the cartridge and runs it dry as well.
 
Hi
Who did you get to fund the sensors as my doc said no way could they take on this expenditure?
 
Almost everyone with a CGM is privately funded, so how they got the funding together is pretty much a personal question.
 

I got my Animas VIBE 8 months ago and had the Pump Not Primed Alarm Warning randomly but never consistently until recently. Cartridge same Lot # as I've been using for weeks: C200017. Yesterday I had 8 Priming Warnings and I've already had 4 today (not even noon).

I'll make sure I stroke the new cartridges multiple times in future but I suspect this issue is due to QC problems with individual cartridges (as often as not many of the same lot # work just fine).
 
CarbsRok said:
Yes I love the CGM side of things, it has been an eye opener for me. I did self fund the sensors for a year managing to stretch each sensor to over a month which helped no end with the cost.
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Please tell me how you're managing to stretch CGM sensors to a month? My Dexcom sensors last 7 days; at $85 CA ea that's $4,400 / year, plus another $1,800 for transmitter replacements.
 
JimInCalgary said:
Please tell me how you're managing to stretch CGM sensors to a month? My Dexcom sensors last 7 days; at $85 CA ea that's $4,400 / year, plus another $1,800 for transmitter replacements.
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Hi Jim,
I use skin tac on the sticky side of the white tape wait a minute until it's tacky then place the sensor where required. (Best place is upper arm) I then coat the top of the tape with more skin tac and surrounding skin then apply some tegaderm/ flexifix over the tape so it's waterproof and the edges of the tape are protected from peeling back.
To restart the sensor all you do is treat it as if it's a new sensor IE, start new sensor and wait the two hours and away you go again Can't remember now but think I managed 13 or 14 months with the transmitter.
 
CarbsRok said:
To restart the sensor all you do is treat it as if it's a new sensor IE, start new sensor and wait the two hours and away you go again Can't remember now but think I managed 13 or 14 months with the transmitter.
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I'm also a huge fan of Skin Tac wipes
I'm all over this re-starting the "used" sensor and treating it like a new one. Thanks so much!
 
JimInCalgary said:
I'm also a huge fan of Skin Tac wipes
I'm all over this re-starting the "used" sensor and treating it like a new one. Thanks so much!
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The secret is to make sure your sensor is well and truly stuck down hence the skin tac, just make sure you don't get any on the actual sensor insertion place as it wont like that at all.
As a rule I think most of us can get 3 weeks on a regular bases with the sensors. I'm going to remove my sensor tomorrow or Thursday afternoon as going into hospital on Monday so want a new one bedded in and working well before surgery
 
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