On Saturday, the founder of the company I work for invited the whole office and our significant others over for a great evening with some fantastic food.
In the middle of my bolus for my fajita the pod, that I’d placed only a few hours before leaving for the cookout, alarmed with an occlusion. I sighed, grabbed my spare pod from my purse and went to the bathroom to activate the new pod. Halfway through priming, the bathroom was filled with screaming… from the pod, not me. (But I was close.)
Plan A was the newly place pod functioning as it should and not needing to think about diabetes much. Plan B was the back up pod that I keep in my purse. Thankfully I have a plan C… although not ideal. Plan C is the orange-capped syringe in my diabetes bag. Not sure how much insulin I got in my failed bolus and SWAG-ing my food for the evening I drew up a completely arbitrary amount of insulin and took the shot.
Notice also the annoying stuck key alarms…
Two pods failing while I was away from home and trying to enjoy my time made me so mad. There was the chance that we would need to end our evening early just so that I could get my basal insulin again.
I’m still angry because in the past three or so months, my OmniPod failure rate has been RIDICULOUS… as in 30% of them fail ridiculous.
I’m still stuck on the old system and am waiting on my update to the new one. I got a reorder notice from my medical supply company. I have to order the new pods and have yet to get notified about upgrading by OmniPod. Obviously I have to get the PDM so I’m a little worried about calling to get replacements and letting them know that I need a new PDM because I’ll need to use up the old pods before even thinking about starting up the new ones.
I’m pretty fed up with the failure rates and seriously hope that the new ones are manufactured better and fail less frequently. I can say that if I experience the same issues with the new system as well, I will start researching other insulin pumps. There may not be a competing tubeless pump out there, but there are definitely other options. A reliable tubed pump is preferable to an unreliable pod.
Wearing the pods is supposed to make diabetes a “smaller part “of my life, but on Saturday, it stole the majority of attention and was anything but small to me.
Hi, Rachel. Sorry to hear you are having such a miserable experience with your Pods + PDM. So far I pumped through 10 v2 pods since starting my pump therapy and I am happy to report 0% failure rate thus far. (With that said I am sure a failure will happen in next few days!)
I was worried about the dreaded occlusions since pod site placement is limited given a low percentage of body fat. I have successfully used my abdomen and back of both arms.
I hope it gets better for you.
Thanks David. I’m hoping it gets better two. I used the old system for over a year without issue, then all of a sudden the failures started.
It was my first occlusion to report and I don’t have “fleshy” areas to place them.
I hope the new pods continue treating you well!
I can totally relate to your frustration and am sorry you had to deal with that. And especially that you were prepared with another pod that failed too. No bueno! I’m not sure what is going on with Insulet recently. I’ve heard of so many issues with different users. I hope it’s something they can figure out. Because you are absolutely right that “A reliable tubed pump is preferable to an unreliable pod”. That is the boat I am in at the current moment.
Wow, that really sticks and the timing really sucked!! 🙁 Weird thing is that I’m reading this post RIGHT after reading the one Stacey wrote about problems with her pods. I hope things get fixed for both of you soon!!