Love my pump! Part 2

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Bloden

Bloden

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
Hubby asked me the other day, “What’s so great about a pump? What are the advantages over MDI?”

I know from Hobie’s Love My Pump! thread that they’re “great” but I couldn’t come up with a list of specific advantages. So, what ARE the advantages? Why IS a pump better than MDI?

I’ll be over at INPUT seeing if I fit the criteria...I look fwd to reading your replies!😛

(Still loving it, Hobie?:D)
 
Much more fine tunable - you can do boluses to the nearest 0.1 unit and basal doses are even smaller. Basal can be adjusted by the hour so e.g. if you are having problems with lows or highs regularly at the same time of day you can just change the basal for that period only and leave the rest of it alone. You can increase or decrease the whole basal pattern by a % temporarily (usually max 24 hours) to help you cope with things like exercise, illness, holidays etc, when you don't want to adjust your main basal pattern. You can do extended/multiwave boluses to spread your meal dose out over time to cope with slower digesting foods or if you have problems like gastroparesis. You only need to change infusion set once every 2-3 days and in the meantime to do a bolus you are just pushing buttons, so if you fancy a second helping of pudding you can just deal with it easily without having to inject again. Bolus wizard will do all the calculations for you so you only have to work out how many carbs and that's it. I could go on but those are the obvious ones.

Downside is that it can be very hard work sometimes, especially in the beginning when you are trying to get it all set up perfectly. Sometimes it's hard to know whether to change your basal or carb ratio, it can feel as if you are forever fiddling! But I would find injections very crude by comparison!
 
All of the above that Sally has said.

For me the biggest change was flexibility. I didn’t need to know what I was going to be doing for the day at 8:00 am, I could simply adjust my basal rates as necessary on an hour by hour basis.

My Basal insulin could be adjusted to suit what I needed, so the end of hypos at 3:00 am which I never got rid of on MDI, unless I ran higher for the rest of the night.

My HbA1c dropped by 10, once I had the necessary work at the start of pumping.

One needle in every two days rather than 6 or 7 jabs a day. This meant the end of most of the tiny bruises over tum and legs that I used to have. I still get a bleeder now and then and it is a lot worse but very rare now.

The Temporary basal rates that I can set up are brilliant for so many things. Exercise (a reduction) and illness(an increase) are a lot easier to deal with.
 
No more long acting insulin in my life- big plus for me as I had a scary time with night time hypos on Lantus.
Tiny amounts of insulin being delivered as basal around the clock, no larger reservoirs of insulin being injected and looking for work.
As above for the rest, flexibility, tiny increments that make such a difference to overall control.

Slight downside you need to very aware that if insulin delivery is interrupted for whatever reason - cannula failure /pump problems/ insulin problems/operator error forgetting to re attach pump after a shower etc blood sugar can rise very high very quickly as there is no long acting insulin floating around in you. You become a Sherlock Holmes of the pump world trying to work out what the issue is. Otherwise all good.🙂

Are you considering a pump @Bloden ?

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The actual answer to your husband's question is, that a pump gives us much better control of our BG for far far longer out of every single day of our lives for the foreseeable future - which the medical profession and their scientific research has proved enables us to avoid diabetic complications and thus enables us to not only ward off (cos we're fitter to begin with) but also fight, all future illnesses and injuries and our bodies in their entirety, to heal properly and in a timely manner.

This becomes more and more important literally by the day because not only do the boobs drop and the hair greys - all of our bodies internally are showing signs of AD !
 
Agree with all of the things suggested so far. Precision (basal and bolus) is a big plus for me. Different patterns for different days. Always hooked up so snacks etc if I fancy them are more usually bolused for rather than me not being bothered on MDI. Plus the return of spontaneity - just being able to stop for lunch *here* even if it wasn't planned and I wouldn;t have brought my bag of gubbins. Different delivery options (dual wave and square wave) for boluses are very handy too.

Lots to learn and experiment with, but well worth the effort I found.

Wrote this after 6 months or so: https://www.everydayupsanddowns.co.uk/2012/05/face-off-mdi-vs-pump.html

Since then I've swapped to different sets, and I almost never have one fail now.
 
Quality of life is no1 on the list.
You can fine tune the amount you need by the hour by 0.025u, you can extend boluses to fit n with any type of meal. Use temp basal when unwell or running low due to having the ability to increase or decrease the basal insulin also suspend all delivery if needed.

It all comes at a price though because you have to work harder using a pump rather than MDI.
Many people expect the pump to be an instant magic fix it isn't, thus the toys out of the pram scenario that is often seen on forums 🙄

Bottom line is you get out of it what you put in 🙂
 
Can you imagine growing up & All your mates go to the sweet shop & there's you a T1 kid. I never used to eat a bag of crisps. Because I had to have a Glass Syringe with Panel pin needles. Do without ! Now with a pump its just a couple of pushes of buttons ! DO I STILL LOVE MY PUMP ! Try & get off me :D
 
HOBIE said:
Can you imagine growing up & All your mates go to the sweet shop & there's you a T1 kid. I never used to eat a bag of crisps. Because I had to have a Glass Syringe with Panel pin needles. Do without ! Now with a pump its just a couple of pushes of buttons ! DO I STILL LOVE MY PUMP ! Try & get off me :D
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I wont get the violin out HOBIE as back in our day yes we did have glass syringes but we also had animal insulin so we had to have 3 main meals a day plus 2 snacks and supper before bed. So can not imagine you went without crisps etc as a child. I certainly didn't, as anything like that was incorporated into my daily carb allowance.
So there was no way on earth that as a child I ever felt left out or different than any other child. This was mainly because I wasn't 🙂
 
Thank you everyone...I’m not sure I want a pump, but I’d like to be able to at least have a sensible conversation about them when I meet my new endo in Sept. :D

I’m beginning to love your pump too, Hobie, if it makes you THAT happy.😛:D😛
 
Bloden said:
Thank you everyone...I’m not sure I want a pump, but I’d like to be able to at least have a sensible conversation about them when I meet my new endo in Sept. :D

I’m beginning to love your pump too, Hobie, if it makes you THAT happy.😛:D😛
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Yes - but it goes without saying that I like mine better! :D😛
 
Despite others opinions PS. I have been T1 since being 3 ! Very nearly all my life & a Pump is like a breath of fresh air for me. I realy realy do LOVE MY PUMP 😉
 
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