Our daughter's numbers have been getting a little unstable lately. She is eager to get a pump. It seems that diabetes has taken over our lives lately rather than just being another thing to deal with. Hoping a pump helps.My wife is so stressed about the crazy glucose numbers she is having trouble sleeping.
She seems to want what here friend has which I think is a Minimed. I plan on calling About the Minimed, Ping and Omnipod.
I am also thinking of making her wear an iPod for a week 24/7 to see how she cares for being tethered to a machine.
Can anyone tell me pros and cons of these three pumps? We need to be able to have fractional boluses. She plays soccer and swims a lot in the summer.If I had to wear one I would think the Omnipod would be the easiest for me to wear.
I did the 3month trial on the Ping (I love OneTouch as a company to begin with, so it meant keeping the UltraSmart meter for me but adding the Animas 2020 pump) because it was the newest option in Canada (we get everything about 5years after the US it seems) and the Omnipod wasn't an option.
I did a week-ish saline trial on the Animas 2020 pump which is helpful because she can take it off and on (though of course, she can't really do that when she's on the pump haha). You still take shots, but it gives you the idea of what living with the pump attached is like.
I didn't end up keeping the pump after my 3month insulin trial, but it was not really Animas' fault so much as my own personal preference, lifestyle, bolus/basal rate problems due to own non-patterning levels and the trouble I had adjusting to what I feel are restrictions of the pump vs MDI.
Animas also has GREAT customer service. My contact was there every step of the way while trying to get my insurance to cover it, and checked up on me for a bit after. She was also readily available when I had questions shortly after starting it. Also the Ping does the smallest doses out of all the pumps available (I believe?), down to 0.05 units which can be really helpful.
My experience with Minimed's customer service is horrible..so much in fact, even though they are the ONLY company in Canada that I could get a CGM with..I will NEVER use their products. I got conflicting information in every phone call, I asked multiple times(including via the website form) for an e-mail information package rather than a mailed information package but didn't receive anything via e-mail..I finally got a mailed package almost three weeks later, that was about the Minimed PUMP not the CGM.
Like I said above, we don't have the Omnipod in Canada so I can't give you any personal experience with the company that makes them(I in fact, don't even know what the company's name is that makes them..) but there are a number of people on here currently using them (they also do saline trials I believe).
I was a Minimed pumper for 5 years and I loved it. As for the tubed vs non tubed pumps, I know there is a lot of advertising about this. I didn't really care about the tubing as it didn't bother me, and to tell you the truth, since I didn't like the CGM, I wouldn't want an appliance stuck to my abdomen. I found that more intrusive than having a pump clipped to my belt or in my pocket.
I was fortunate in that I had excellent service with Medtronic. I have to agree that I didn't always get good service online, but since they have 800 numbers, my phone calls were always excellent. I've had loaner pumps, upgrades, returned upgrades, problems with boxes of infusion sets that were replaced by the company at no charge to me, etc. In fact, at one point I upgraded from the 511 to the 512 and when I didn't like it, they actually gave me my old pump back (complete with all my settings intact so I didn't have to re-input anything.
With the swimming, the Medtronic pump is not waterproof, but it is also possible that with the intense exercise, she could get away with not wearing it at all during this time anyway. Just a thought. I could get away with about an hour and a half pump free when my husband and I were having fun.
The only thing I can warn you about is don't get complacent with a pump. It still requires a tremendous amount of work. But for that work, you can get really great results. What I loved so much with my pump was the tiny fractions of a unit that could be bolused. To give you an idea, on a "bad" carb day (lots of refined bad carbs) I would take up to 25 units total in a day. Usually I was only taking about 17 or 20 so small snacks required very small boluses (sometimes only 0.1 or 0.2 units at a time). Heaven!!!!
The bottom line is that I think there isn't a great deal of difference between pumps. Just check out the peripheral gadgets and see what you like best. I missed out on the "skins" for the medtronic pumps (I had a pancreas transplant with my kidney transplant) and they are quite cute. I would have bought a bunch:
I have used Medtronic, Deltec (no longer exists), and Animas pumps. I have been very pleased with the Medtronic and Animas pumps. I used Medtronic for 8 years. I found their pumps to be very reliable, only replace it 3x in 8 years. I was always happy with Medtronic customer service, but because I hardly had problems with the pump, I never had to contact them very often. I haven't used a Medtronic in over 3 years now, so things certainly could have changed within the last couple years. I didn't leave Medtronic because I didn't like the products, either. When it was time for me to upgrade again, they didn't have any new features I was interested in, so I decided to peruse some other companies.
Animas, which I'm currently using, is a product I am very, very pleased with. As far as aesthetics go, I like the various colors you can choose from as well as the pretty colored insertion sites. Because I'm going to be wearing a piece of equipment 24 hours a day, I at least want it to be pretty and enjoyable :o) As far as I know, Animas has the smallest incremental insulin doses (0.025 units) for both basal and bolus insulin. This allows you to perfect the doses down to miniscule amounts. The meter and the pump communicate with each other, so the meter doubles as a remote, where you can bolus and take insulin from it (very hand for us ladies who occasionally hide our pumps in places not easily reachable). It uses a OneTouch Ping meter. I have always been happy with OneTouch products, with the exception of the times when the meter begins counting down before I'm done putting blood on it. That's always a bit annoying.
Animas has also partnered with DexCom, a CGM company. I just began wearing a DexCom 7+ CGM almost a month ago and am very happy with the accuracy of the technology and improvements to my blood sugars since wearing it. In the near future, Animas and DexCom are working on integrating the pump and CGM with each other to have one single device similar to Medtronic's pump/CGM. In my opinion, both Animas and DexCom have had excellent customer service. When a replacement is needed, it is immediately shipped out. Regardless of time of day or night, someone is always willing to work with me on my various problems. I have extremely sensitive skin to the adhesives on pumps and CGMs, and they've been very helpful in trying to find alternatives or solutions to keep the allergic reactions at bay.
Needless to say, I think you would be pleased with either Medtronic or Animas. I think both have great products. Essentially, they serve the same functions. It will come down to the bells and whistles basically. What extra features do you like? That's usually what decides it for me. I would like to have a tubless pump, but I want a smaller option. For me, at least at this point, I think the OmniPod is too large.
I have been on the Omnipod for a little over a year and I love it! I love not having the tubing to catch on things or get clogged and not having something hanging on the outside of my clothes. I like it the best on my arms. If you contact Omnipod, they will send you a nonworking pod for her to wear to see how she likes it. When I got my trial pod, I was surprised that it wasn't a large as I thought it would be by looking at the pictures.
My daughter is almost 11 and she's been on the Animas Ping for about a month now and loves it. I looked at the same three you're looking at. I had a sample Omnipod mailed to me. Sarah thought it was too weighty (she's a pretty small girl) and didn't want it hanging off her. I also looked at the Minimed.
The nice thing about Animas is that it comes with the one-touch remote, which is your meter but also can control the pump. She likes it because when she tests she can immediately enter her carbs and take her insulin, without ever having to touch the pump. It's been nice for me because I often check her during the night, and if she's high, I can give her a correction without waking her to get to the pump.
She doesn't mind being "tethered" at all. She wears it on her jeans using the clip it came with. She hasn't snagged it once.