Pump compared to MDI-feel more in control?

To anyone new or considering i would say life on a pump isnt easy its hard work but the benefits def out weigh the work involved. for us the main benefit is not having such wild swings in blood readings dylan felt ill all the time being low one minute and then high the next now that is gone no more readings in the 20s either.

surprisingly carrying it around all the time hasnt been a negative for dylan either and the less injections is a huge plus but the bit dylan likes the best is being able to eat when he feels like it and to be able to have a pudding or a treat more than he ever could on MDI, he also feels more in control himself.

we are def pro pump and wouldnt hand it back for anything

anna marie

I have been on the pump for two weeks now and I already feel much more in control than I ever have on MDI. My levels have been so much more stable which I can only attribute to the pump because I can set up my basal insulin to adapt to my body's needs by the hour. A long-acting insulin like Levemir or Lantus could never do this!

It's also the perfect way to remedy the Dawn Phenomenon I suffer from (where your liver starts releasing glucose just before you wake, which in my case usually lasts until I have my breakfast). When I was on MDI I could never combat this, but now I have set my pump to start giving me more insulin at 6am (an hour before I wake up) until 9am which is when I usually have my breakfast. It's taken a bit of setting up and getting it right but it seems to be working miracles now!

Anna Marie is right, it's definitely a lot more work but it's so worth it! I coudn't imagine my life without it!

I haven't found the pump to be more work, for us it's been about the same as MDI (during the day) and less as MDI (during the night). On MDI I was waking up either at 2am to fight off hypos (when basal overnight was increased) or waking at 4-5am to give a correction injection of rapid acting insulin to ward off high morning readings (when we reduced the overnight basal to avoid the 2am lows). No matter what we tried we couldn't get a good stable overnight reading even although we were only tweaking the overnight basal by half a unit. The pump has solved this problem for us and I feel so much better that I have a full nights sleep. My daughter's teachers have commented on her improved concentration at school, no doubt because she's getting a good nights sleep and also I'm sure as a result of improved BG control.

During the daytime we don't get a spike in BG immediately after eating like we did with MDI. The bolus with a pump seems to work much more efficiently. On MDI it was not uncommon to have readings in the 14mmol - 16mmol range within an hour of eating. On the pump it's not often that it goes above 9 or 10 mmol within the hour.

What hasn't changed a lot is the amount of attention to pay to diabetes. We still test regularly, although it's probably a little less now than before because the readings are much more predictable. MDI we tested about 8 - 10 times per day, now it's about 6 times a day. We do pump checks each day and set changes every other day.

Jess says one of the big advantages is that she now has one needle prick (set change) every 2 days as opposed to 6+ injections each day.

Using a pump is a much more positive experience for Jess because it's like a gadget. Her friends comment "cool" when they see it. On MDI the comments were more like "euww, does that hurt". So I think psychologically it's a positive for Jess.

Jess uses less insulin now with the pump than she did with MDI. That has to be a good thing to avoid insulin resistance. Even although we use less insulin her BG is better controlled and she feels healthier. We don't have such large swings between high readings and hypos. Hypos are far less frequent than they used to be, high readings now are something unusual rather than the accepted norm as they were with MDI.

Jess mostly has hypo awareness back now, something she lost when on MDI.