Blood sugar warnings over time?

[Pumper_Sue]

Sue! Now I am fuming lol The hospital told me that I couldn't use a pump as my porcine insulin does not come in vials that fit the pump!! I think that I will come on here to get the real facts in future lol I decided not to ask for a pump as I am due for a pancreas transplant when I have lost the weight but I might do now. Thank you so much for the info lol

No idea where your hospital team got that idea from as you don't put the vials in the pumps anyway. You fill the pump cartridge up from the insulin vial.
What it boils down to is your team no nothing about animal insulin and they don't want to know. There are loads of pumpers using porcine insulin in a pump and pos 1 using bovine (that's me)

 

[FM001]

30 years and still have full hypo awareness, safe to say the fewer hypo's you have the less likely you are to lose those vital warning signs.

 

[Lady Willpower]

I remember something else they said as well about not using porcine. I think it was something to do with the needles being too thin for the insulin or something, it was a while ago lol I am definitely going to contact my DSN tomorrow to ask about it, thanks x

 

[Pumper_Sue]

I remember something else they said as well about not using porcine. I think it was something to do with the needles being too thin for the insulin or something, it was a while ago lol I am definitely going to contact my DSN tomorrow to ask about it, thanks x

Lol I was told the insulin was to thick to go through the tubing by a dsn as well. I suggested that perhaps she was a bit thick to believe something like that. 🙄
I also had a consultant throw a letter from the insulin manufactures across the table and shouting at me they are liars 😱
As long as you know how to carb count and have used your porcine insulin for MDI then their is no reason not use it in a pump.
It took a long time and a lot of help from my GP to be able to have a pump on the NHS. ( I self funded whilst the battle went on) I have no dsn input or consultant for my diabetes and just get on with life.

The attitude of your clinic staff just means they have no idea how to set up a pump using animal insulin and they are to lazy to pick up a phone or even email someone who does know the in's and out's of using animal insulin in a pump.
I did point out to my PCT in the end that pumps were invented and used long before synthetic insulin came along, so perhaps before this they used washing up liquid in the pump
As you can imagine there was a few red faces.

 

[Copepod]

Glad that Sue has explained the range of insulins that is really available for pump use, not just what some clinics think are available.

Just to mention that there are basically 3 types of insulins and most categories have some short acting and some long acting representatives - animal (porcine / bovine),
human sequence (eg insulatard / Humalin I)
human analogue (eg Humalog, Lantus, Levemir). This is not a complete list of names, but I mention this because Humalin I is very rarely offered these days, despite it being half the cost of other long acting insulins such as Lantus or Levemir. While it might not suit everyone, it's worth considering, and as it's much cheaper than analogue insulins or a pump, I can't understand why NHS diabetes specialists don't think of it more often. .