My 12 year old daughter started using the 670G Mini Med pump one week ago. There is a lot to learn but she is very excited to have this new technology. We are scheduled for her to meet with diabetes educator next week and hopefully begin AUTO MODE at that time. Would love to hear from any other 670G users and if they have any advice for what to do and not do in manual mode and/or auto mode. I appreciate hearing any advice or tricks you have learned along the way. I know that we must be very patient with this new technology. I am going to be patient and know it could take several months for the 670G to finally do what it was designed to do. Thanks!
Hi,
Welcome to the club. A few suggestions that I have are to:
Ensure that you work out a plan for dealing with high BGs with your daughterās educator. Auto appears to be really stingy with correction bolusās. If you donāt have a plan in place and understand what it is doing, you can really mess up Auto ālearningā your daughterās diabetes.
Also work with the educator to understand what to do if you get into the dreaded āloopingā problem. It is really frustrating and auto can be appear to be really lost at times. It will also cause you to go through lots of testing supplies if you do not know what to do when it happens
Always have a BG meter handy. Auto will probably want BGs at really inconvenient times, particularly for the first month or so.
If your daughter is active (sports), make sure you spend time figuring out how to get the temp target feature to work for her. You need to determine when to turn it on in advance of the activity.
Be really, really patient. Iāve been on auto since mid - March. Things are very, very slowly improving but auto is still having problems with one part of my day on a regular basis.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate your suggestions. My daughter is not as active as your typical 12 year old due to physical disabilities from a stroke she had when she was 3 years old, so we donāt have to worry too much about lots of activity. Thanks again!!!
Welcome to the 670G Club! I found that when in manual mode that little meter is a godsent device. You can go in and setup preset Bolus amounts that can easily be accessed and sent via the meter by using remote bolus. This saves a lot of the questions in public from strangers (if she is shy about it). But now when you enter Auto mode the BIGGEST advice any of us can give I think is to be patient, the computer needs to learn the patterns for your daughterās body. It wonāt be instantaneous as I used to have a crazy high spike (400+) at about 5 AM every night and for the first week Auto mode could not keep up with that spike, and then by the end of the second week . . . I never spiked because automode was buffing my insulin about 45 min in advance with larger micro bolus so that when the spike came, it was ready for it.
Like mentioned by other people, the auto mode is conservative on giving correction insulin, which is good as you do not want to go low. I find that as the CGM sensor gets towards end of life 5th or 6th day, the pump will not stay in auto mode, which is OK. Manual mode has a nice graph and display.
Best of luck and hope the pump works out. I love mine.
Hi Christopher @Christopher.Vance. Quick question on auto learning your morning spike. Iāve been dealing with an evening spike (250+ in the late evening). Did you do the correction boluses that auto recommends or did you just put up with the spike until auto figured out what to do? Iāve been dealing with this evening spike for a few months and it really isnāt getting resolved. I do the recommended corrections - possibly this is what is confusing auto. Iām about ready to give up on auto. Any advice?
I have been on Medtronic pumps since I was 11 (18 years ago!). I started the 670g about 5 weeks ago and have been using auto mode for 3 weeks now.
Others have said this, but really the key has been patience. Itās not going to be perfect right away, itās not going to be perfect for weeks. What Iāve seen on other forums is that 3 months seems to be the trend.
Since starting Auto Mode I have been running higher than I was on my previous pump. The hard part is not stressing over that; Iām only 3 weeks in. For me, I was very used to being so proactive for so many years. It has been a bit odd to not be AS proactive. I have seen a change coming into my 4th week. I am starting to trend like I used to.
Tips:
Patience
Prebolusing is key! I have had to be way more diligent about prebolusing while in auto mode to avoid post meal spikes.
It asks you to enter a BG pretty frequently. This is part of the pump learning process, and apparently this gets better as the pump learns. The tricky part is you have to be selective about when you actually give it a BG. If itās been 30 min to an hour since Iāve entered at BG, I do not give it another one. I wait at least 30 min to avoid getting in āthe loopā.
I watched the medtronic videos and read the manual. They were very helpful going into training.
I like my 670g so far. Iām excited for it to learn me more. I can already say that I have slept through the night more in the last 3 weeks than I have in a long time. Thatās a pretty good win in my opinion.
kkavolinas please explain what the looping issue is. I just started on the 670 a couple days ago and Iāve had to change my sensor already. I was up a lot the first night because it kept asking me to check my blood sugar and kept stopping my basal rate.
@lisabw26 Hi Lisa - welcome to the club. Basically the pump (auto) requests a calibration and then then immediately requests a BG entry, then requests another BG, then requests a calibration. And then it will do it again, and again, ā¦ You have to have a plan to break out of the looping. Medtronic tech support or your trainer should be able to help you figure out what the best way for you is. There is also an thread devoted to this problem - Issues with the 670G āLoopingā. There is a lot of discussion on this problem in this thread
Yes, I experienced this my first night with the pump. I got very little sleep that night, and I had to work the next day! I like the advice about not calibrating if more than 35 difference. I do like that he pump stops delivering basal insulin if it looks like Iām going to be low. I probably wonāt start auto mode until the last week of July, because Iām going on vacation Saturday and then Iām going to give it another āregularā week after that. Iām entering a lot of data - events under options - to try to teach it how my body responds to food and exercise. I know there will be bumps in the road, but I am committed to making this work.