Another newbie :-)

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fallfromgrace

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Type 1
Hi, my name is Emma but most people call me Grace or Boo so whatever your preference is! I have been a type one diabetic for 21 years, from when I was just 5 years old and have recently swapped from 5 insulin injections a day to the Accu chek pump. Will look forward to hopefully chatting with you all, have a great day! 🙂
 
Hi Boo, welcome to the forum 🙂 You'll find lots of people here who have been through similar things, so have a lot in common. I look forward to hearing more from you 🙂
 
Thank you for a lovely welcome, my sister calls me Boo so a good choice there! Will look forward to hearing from you too 🙂
 
Hello Boo, welcome to the forum!

We have the Accu Chek pump as well, and a fantastic piece of kit it is too. What do you think of yours? How long have you been on it?

Any questions, about pumps or anything else, ask away 🙂
 
Its great isn't it? Ive had it for around 6 weeks now, so still getting used to a couple of things but on the whole Ive found it a lot easier to get used to than I thought I would. I was told that when Im unwell, I can change the basal rate percentages so I tried to do that on Sunday but ended up changing the setting via the blood meter from 4 to 5! So I will have to seek some guidance from the nurse when I see her on Friday, luckily I managed to put it back down to 4. Have you changed the percentage before if your daughter has been poorly? 🙂
 
Yes several times, if she's on her school basal we need to at least double it, of she's on the holiday one it doesn't need to go up so much. We're now also finding that after evening dance classes we're having to set up a reduced basal (90%) overnight to prevent her going hypo at 2am 😱

It's dead easy to do - on the handset go to Pump, when it's connected you will see your current basal rate on the screen. Then keep pressing the left hand button (the one around the circle in the middle) to work through the menu until you get to Temporary Basal Rate. Press the right hand button to select. 100% will be highlghted, go up or down as necessary to select the temp rate you need. Then press the LEFT button again to select the time and enter however long you want it to run for. When all done press the right hand button to save the settings. Display will now show % TBR and small numbers with the actual amount of basal going in. Then you can exit from pump and switch the handset off.

If you need to change the settings just go back in the same way and change them, easy. If you change your mind and want to cancel the TBR I find the easiest way is to just stop the whole pump, cancel the resulting alarm that tells you that the TBR has been stopped, and then restart the pump (it will resume at the normal rate).

Please be aware that pump will bleep on the hour every hour when a TBR is running, although on my daughter's that's not too loud and therefore bearable. What's worse is that you will get a great big alarm going off just to tell you when the TBR has ended and it won't shut up until you push some buttons, so be careful when setting up the timing, you might want to try and ensure that it doesn't go off in the middle of the night or when you are going to be somewhere quiet and don't want to draw attention to yourself :D
 
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I had no idea it sets off an alarm or beeps every hour so I am very glad of the heads up on that one! I think I was getting confused with the arrowkeys sometimes being used for menu's and othertimes for increasing and decreasing, but thats more my ignorance to blame. Ive just tried it via my pump and altered it back so I am very grateful for your advice, it will help me out an awful lot. How does your daughter get on with the pump at school? They weren't available when I was there so just wondered whether the teachers and pupils are helpful to her 🙂
 
Glad to be of help 🙂

Re the buttons, the thing to remember is that the pump itself only has 4 buttons, so when you are operating the pump via the handset (i.e. anything you do after selecting Pump from the menu, until you exit again) the pump will only recognise 4 buttons in the handset. These are the four around the circle in the middle, top and bottom are the up and down buttons, the left becomes the menu button and the right becomes the tick button. Then once you have exited from the pump and are just in the handset menus, all the other buttons come into play again.

We are lucky in that the school has so far always been very supportive with anything to do with the D, they are all quite fascinated with the pump and I think in general people think that a quick blood test followed by pushing a few buttons is much better than having to stick needles in her! I always send a post-it note with that day's carb count on it with her test kit so nobody has to do any calculations, easy peasy. Although it does cause a bit of a panic if any alarms go off (occlusion, low cartridge etc) but luckily this doesn't happen very often!
 
Ive just got to try and cement that in my brain and not get into a flap if I get it wrong!
aw thats great that her school is so supportive, did they used to have to inject her? When I was at school I was only on 2 injections a day, morning and eve and didnt do carb counting so all my school had to do was blood testing when I was a younger pupil. It must make your daughter feel a lot more confident having you sort out the carbs for her so she doesnt have to worry that the school are miscalculating. Im glad the panics don't happen very often! Has she ever been to one of the diabetes camps? 🙂
 
Hello and welcome Boo 🙂

Glad to hear you are getting used to your pump. I've been using a pump for 12 years now, used to use a Roche pump but now use a Medtronic. It has helped me get so much better control and I hope it does the same for you.
 
Thank you, I really hope so! Are there main differences between the two pumps or is it mainly personal preference? Im glad you have had such success 🙂
 
No we have never been to an official diabetes camp, although it's funny you should ask that, this very weekend we are going camping with some other diabetic children! Not an official camp though, just some other families that the hospital put us in touch with.

Daughter was dx at the very end of year 1 at school, she spent the very last 3 days of school in hospital. So then we had the 6 weeks holidays to get used to it all, and got the pump during that time (we were extremely lucky and had it practically forced on us :D). So school have never had to inject her, they've got a pen there in case of emergencies plus also the DSN's contact details in case they can't get hold of me, but as yet have never needed it. Let's hope that continues!
 
I hope that continues too, it sounds like you are all really on top of it so shouldnt be any need to worry too much 🙂 That is quite ironic about the camping, its great that the hospital are so keen to keep her in touch with fellow diabetic children, must be nice for all of them to be able to play together and understand if one of them has a hypo, etc... I heard that hospitals were very keen to get younger diabetics on pumps, great idea in my opinion 🙂
 
Welcome Boo
The Accu-Chek combo is a fantastic piece of kit isn't it -so much better than injections. I'm still getting used to mine after seven months and need to check out the manual now and again. I definitely wouldn't want to be without the pump now. 🙂
 
Thank you for such a lovely welcome! I am loving it so far, the nurse I see weekly says its always a learning curve so I will probably be checking out the manual a lot too. Ive only been on it just over a month and already can't imagine going back to injections! 🙂
 
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