Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Starting the Pump

Hi
Been a little busy lately with the holidays here and other stuff.
On Nov 15 I started pumping. The following steps are what I had to do to start.
The night before I did not take my last shot of Levemir and did not have my bed time snake.
My trainer wanted me to start with fasting bs to see where I was at.
When I got up in the morning I checked my bs to make sure that I would not go low on the drive into the Docs office. With me I had to bring pump, supplies, insulin, lunch, meter, and something to keep me occupied while I was there for about 5 hours.

First thing was to check my BS, then set up the pump, after that load the pump.
I did all that with the trainer watching to make sure that I did it right.
Now the fun began, insert the infusion set and start.
Over the next three hours checked the blood to make sure everything was in working order and it was.

Now lunch time. My pump has the ez carb feature which is nice. On that screen I put in the amount of carbs I am going to be eating, then what my bs is. The pump then calculates how much insulin to take, that number is put in manually push ok and then it goes in.

I have started with a base line for my basal rate and will adjust that as needed. It is stared low so we can creep up on the final rate for me.

Some of the info that is put in the pump during set up it, insulin to carb ratio, what your normal bs should be, max basal and bolus rates should be.

so far it has been nice not to worry about taking my shots and carrying around all that stuff.
Now when we go out I just put my meter in my coat pocket and I am ready to go.

I did pick up a bodyglove universal cell phone holster that fits the pump nicely. I like that better than the case that came with it. It has a swivel clip and a clear front. All that I have to be careful of is not touching any buttons when I am bolusing that stops the pump.

later

Bob

2 comments:

Zarah said...

Hey Bob, nice to hear you finally got your pump going. I've been type II diagnosed since June of 2005 and I'm horrible at taking my insulin, so I've been thinking about talking to my doc about a pump. Please do keep updating your blog on how it goes! Best of luck!

Florian said...

Hi Bob,
I use an Animas 2020 with Apidra. I would be curious to know how well the ezCarb feature is working for calculating meal boluses and the ezBG feature is working for making corrections. I am still trying to fine tune all the settings for basal rate, I:C ratios, ISF, and insulin duration of activity. What are your settings now?
How did you make out on Thanksgiving Day with all the good foods to eat. What were your numbers?
What Infusion set do you use? I am using the INSETS, 9mm cannula, 23"tubing. They work well and I change every 4 days.
I am looking forward to hearing from you and reading more blogs about your experience with the Animas 2020. Good luck.

Florian