Next week my son and I will be attending the Ping Saline Class at the hospital. I would like to know what they would most likely do so if anyone has attended this type of class prior to getting your pump please let me know. The class is 2 hours long but the nurse said that other parents will be there during that time period but we would get individual instruction. I am guessing that we will be called in but don't know for how long or what they would cover. . I would also be interested in any type of information on what to expect even if pump is not the ping. Thank you all
Our pump-prep class was my husband and I with our son and then 2 other parents with their daughter. Because our kids were little, they just played and colored while we had class.
The first part was just going over the pump terminology and doing example exercises, similar to the problems on that quiz they had you fill out. They also explained how high BGs would be treated differently on the pump than what we had been taught with MDI (mainly check for ketones if even one BG is over 300). Then because of the age of our kids, we didn't do saline trials. They just stuck the infusion sets on them (vs. in them) and had them wear the pump for the next 3 days. This was because the CDE said that her experience is that kids under 8 get confused by having a new needle stick and then still having to get shots. This worked fine for our son.
They were also able to talk about the different pumps - we had already decided on the Ping, but the other family was looking at Medtronic or Ping. THey talked them thru the differences.
For my saline trial on the Animas 2020(they don't have a ping loaner, since its a pairing with a $500 meter..I was the second person on Van Island to get the Ping since it was recently released in Canada).
I didn't go to a class, the sales rep came to my house. took about an hour tops, super easy, super basic too..they won't go
into the real technical stuff until you're actually getting trained to
use insulin with the Ping.
He showed me how to put a site in, where to put it, how to take it out, how to prep the pump with saline as if i were putting insulin in it, and the basic functions. he just told me to play with the different bolus' and see how it all works and get used to wearing it/sleeping with it on(that was the hardest part).
I had it for two weeks, I don't know how long you will have it, but I did take breaks for a couple of days from it when I was frustrated with having it attached all the time.
Once you decide on the ping, you'll get more detailed training. Again, I did training in the comfort of my own home, not a class, and it was one-on-one with my trainer(and my mom just sat back and listened since only I will ever be in control of the pump...don't expect them to tell you that you will be touching it at all..as even in the hospital, I was told to tell nurses to back-off and go back to MDI if I couldn't physically control the pump). He went into the detail of how to treat a high/low, suspend mode, the safe mode(if I don't touch my pump for 12hours, it shuts off the insulin delievery in case I've gone into a coma from a low or something), what to do if the site fails/troubleshooting, when to use which bolus program, how to set my basal rates/change them/how to set multiple ones, etc.