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Sunday 17 April 2016

Welcome Back King

At 1.30am on Tuesday morning I should have been sleeping, but I wasn't. Ignoring the fact that Brisbane was still almost too hot to exist at 94% humidity (Seriously Brisbane, we're mid-way through Autumn now), I had another reason to be blearily rubbing my eyes and yawning out any and all curse words I could think of. I was happily tossing and turning, kicking the sheets away and generally taking over as much bed space as possible when my husband shook me awake.

My pump was blaring away about something. I mashed some buttons, assuming it was nothing I needed to know about. It blared again, so I forced myself to crack open an eye and read the screen. Some sort of message about power failure and basal being stopped. I sort of knew it was coming because it had asked for 2 battery changes within 48 hours. I probably should have called the helpline then - but laziness and denial are some of my best friends. If I had called, I would have found out that apparently you can fix that particular power failure problem yourself, and it would have saved a lot of hassle afterwards. But 1.30am. 

I was tired and I just wanted to go back to the land of nod. I decided to set up my back-up pump, took the battery out of the malfunctioning pump, and shoved it deep within my sock drawer while it continued to beep about it's battery being removed. 

I called the helpline the next day, and they talked me through the power failure. Unfortunately, I had already set up my back-up pump with a sensor. I had swapped the transmitter to my old MiniMed transmitter when the pump malfunction happened, not wanting to waste a sensor that I had only put in 3 hours beforehand.

I am pretty impressed with the life of my MiniMed transmitter. I think that transmitter warranty life is about a year, but it has been kicking along for 3 and a half years now, and still holds charge well, whilst somehow seeming to give more accurate readings the older it gets. Though that could just be that I know all the tricks now.

So at least I have my back-up transmitter and pump working, but it's driving me nuts. I'm definitely a spoilt princess of diabetes land, and I'm used to my new technology.

I have to press the esc button to see my sensor readings, rather than having a beautiful, colourful graph and SG displayed on the screen at all times.

The sensor doesn't suspend before low - only on low. I actually have to treat hypos myself. I have a toothache right now because I've been having to have juices, when normally the sensor just catches me and I don't even think about it.

I have to scroll into a menu to set a temp basal. Being my lazy self, it just means that I haven't set a temp basal since swapping onto the old pump. With the 640G, the shortcut to a temp basal is on the screen, and only takes 2 seconds to set-up.

My meter doesn't connect!!! I have to save things manually in capture event. Sadly, my educator will just have to scroll through my meter because I am not bothering to capture that many events. And wearing a dress this week has been hard, not being able to bolus from my meter. Many, many strangers have seen my undies this week.

Don't get me wrong, I still love the old MiniMed, but I am so used to the 640G and its more intuitive programming. I swear, it can tell what I'm thinking and what I need. Its just a lot less thinking and time spent actually using the pump on my part. I kind of just let the 640G do its thing.

Thankfully I am connected back up to the 640G again with a new sensor due to start tomorrow morning. I'm going to treat this as an exercise in the art of appreciation.


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