I've been on the pump since the end of August and had only one training and now I'm wondering should I have had more? Do you know of any "pump training sessions"?
I think I only had one initial session to get going when I started a few years ago. It's really about how comfortable you feel and if your pump has other features that you'd like some guidance using. Do you have a CDE that you see? I know mine is available to set up training and refresher courses whenever I need them. That might be a place to look if you wanted to learn more.
i had about a 15min "training" session when i went on the saline trial..but it was just to show me how to change sites, basic button function(i was just suppose to "play" with the machine) and just pretty much how to avoid damaging the pump they loaned me.
for my actual "training" it was about 1.5hours long, where we just set-up all my rates, went over what i already knew and discussed how the rest of my day would go and what to watch for that night(i had taken my morning lantus at 8am, but got set-up at 10am on the pump..so i had to watch for lows that night..which happened and SUCKED).
that was about it. my trainer(a nurse at the diabetic clinic down the road) told me to call him at home or work or on his cell if i had any questions or something happened and that was it.
OK, the question I have is who created the words Bolus and Basal. I always get the two words confused. Why not hourly rate versus Meal dose or something that doesn't start with the same letter. I just sayin' here. You know, isn't enough we have diabetes, now they have to try and keep us confused on what we are receiving. Is it my Basal I'm getting or maybe my bolus. Some smart A-- thought this up. I am conviced!
i think it was all created when the pump started. we never referred to my long-acting and short-acting by those names until i did a 3month trial of the pump.
Dan - I always got those mixed up, too, until I started on a pump... now I see those words all the time. Maybe it's because I'm a visual learner.
Blame science!
Basal and Bolus are science / medical terms, when I learned them in college they had nothing to do with diabetes.
If it helps, when I learned these terms I just remember that , basal is like baseline or just 'base'. It is the amount that is always there and is pretty constant, the base for adding more. THen I just remember that bolus is the other one - or the equivalent of giving yourself a shot.
To Genel, for my son our clinic had a couple classes that we had to take, but it is a huge pediatric diabetes clinic so they are pretty well organized. When we actually started on the pump we had about 1.5 hours with a pump trainer for Animas and they just started us with only using the basic features of the pump. After 2 weeks we had a followup session for about an hour when they set up the advanced features.
There are other things that we have just figured out on our own. Are there menus you don't know what they do? You could contact your pump supplier and see if there is a pump trainer in your area if you have questions - or just call the company, they will walk you thru anything you are unfamiliar with on the phone.