Hi my wife is a Tyope 1 and she is starting the procedure to change from her pen needles of Humalog and Lantus to an insulin pump/monitor.

I would like to know who is on one already and the pros and cons of these devices. I really hope it helps her

I really love my pump. I have a Minimed Paradigm 515 and it's great. You can get much better control. One of the things that make it superior to lantus is that you can more effectively deal with the dawn phenomenon (blood sugar rise between midnight and dawn) by having a higher basal rate. I turn my pump down when I am exercising - another advantage over lantus.

There are all kinds of things that are great about a pump. I went from 4 - 5 shots per day to one every 3 days. A big plus!

If you have any specific questions, just let us know.

There is a bit of an adjustment period as the last of the lantus gets out of your system and you become used to just the rapid acting. They usually start you on less than you need, and then you work up to the proper dosage. Typically, you take less insulin overall on a pump.

Cora

I'm also on the Paradigm...mine is the 512, but will be upgrading to the 522 later this year.

Personally, I can't see any downside to the pump. There are so many things you can do on a pump that you cannot do (or at least not easily!) on shots. For example, you can fine-tune your basal rates much better than you can on Lantus. If you need more insulin at certain times of the day, you can set up basal patterns to automatically deliver different amounts for different periods of the day. You can even program different patterns for different days of the week...for example, if you always exercise a lot on weekends but not during the week, you might need a lower basal rate for at least part of every Saturday and Sunday.

You can also cope with high fat foods, such as pizza, with the dual wave bolus feature. You can program a bolus to be delivered half immediately, the remainder over a period of time (4-5 hours works well for pizza).

You can also set the pump to remind you to test at a certain time after every bolus...I test 2 1/2 hours after my bolus, and the pump beeps to remind me.

I'm not sure if we've got any members here who are on the Animas or Deltec Cozmo pumps who can give an assessment of why they chose those particular models, but if you do an online search, you can probably find a comparison chart of the three pumps.

Ruth

The best feature of Animas is the fact thats it's TOTALLY waterproof, not merely "water-resistant".

Thanks yall this is helping me, Next Q what is the usually time of adjustment to be fully acclumated to having a pump from lantus shots etc ?

Im sorry about htis i will probably have a few questions i just keep throwing in to the topic, hope yall dont mind.

The adjustment period depends on both the patient and the pump team. As long as your wife is already counting carbs (and I assume that's the case since she's on humalog with lantus), learning the pump isn't all that difficult. Medtronic has an online pump course that teaches the basics. The biggest issue (not hard, but time consuming) is getting your basals set right, and you have to do some partial fasting along with a LOT of testing over the first week or two to get the basals fine-tuned.

I got my pump, played with it (unconnected) at home for a week, went to see the CDE and pump trainer and got hooked up, with insulin, and was totally comfortable and confident within a week or so. I've since learned a lot more about fine-tuning and using some of the great features, but for basic pumping it doesn't take that long.

Ruth