Thursday, August 22, 2013

Back that pump up!

I've been pumping since November 2002. Medtronic and I have been together for almost 11 years now. It has just recently occurred to me that I haven't had a solid backup plan since around that time. Thankfully, I've never needed one.

I didn't have my pump setting written down for quite some time. Let me fill you in on the panic that led to this realization. It was a normal Friday night, and my pump was beeping at me to change my battery. I pulled out my pack of AAA batteries and changed the battery as normal. But nothing happened. My pump never came back to life. I frantically ran through my apartment looking for my backup kit. I pulled fresh batteries from a fresh pack and tried again. Nothing. Panic set in. I realized that I have no backup plan in place. If my pump had truly just died, I didn't know my settings, either! Thankfully, the thing came to life after sitting around for a few minutes as I was panicking.

Fast forward a few weeks. Another Friday night. Time to change my battery again. I changed it and waited the requisite two minutes for its display to come back. Everything was peachy. I went to bed with a low reservoir beeping. I thought I had enough insulin to last through the night. I was tired. My pump ran out of insulin at 4AM. Fine. I got up and filled a reservoir. As I was rewinding the pump, the pump shut off. No battery power. Ack. So I ran around and found another new battery and replaced it immediately. I had to rewind the pump again since it stopped halfway through. Then I finished changing my reservoir, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

I called Medtronic in the morning. The rep didn't sound very concerned. My pump had been acting up in a few different ways, and the accumulation was starting to really bother me. In addition to the power failure, it has taken longer and longer for the pump to wake up after a battery change. It's taken longer and longer to register blood sugar results being sent from my meter. When I was scrolling through to set the carbs for a bolus, it would routinely skip numbers. It would scroll... 20,21,22,45,46,47... It was the number skipping which concerned the rep. At any rate, I got a new pump on Monday. They told me they were out of purple pumps, and I was really bummed my replacement pump was going to be blue. When I opened the box on Monday, I was pleasantly surprised. 


1 comment:

  1. "The rep didn't sound very concerned"? I'd be concerned; very concerned. I'm glad they sent you a replacement pump though (and what you wanted, too!).

    I've made a habit of syncing my pump with Carelink every so often so my settings get stored on there. I also keep my rates and ratios stored in a Notes app on my phone -- that way I know what to do if I need to suddenly resort to Plan B (or C) and need to know the numbers.

    Glad it all worked out OK in the end!

    ReplyDelete