Sorry for the long hiatus. I’ve been working on trying to figure out why my sugars were so off the charts high, even with increased basals, ratios, and all of that good stuff.

After fighting and fighting with it, I decided to see if maybe my pump was the issue. So, I switched off of the t:slim and put a pod out of my minimal stash on to see if my sugars responded. If not, then I was going to assume that I had one massive cold or other illness about to come. If so, then I was calling Tandem.

Lo and behold, it was the pump from what I could tell. After three bottles of new insulin opened (which one will be wasted by the end of the month), 4 cartridges and 6 sites, nothing made the sugar budge to come down other than running a 40-50% increase of all insulin being delivered (basals AND boluses). Within two hours of wearing a pod, my sugars returned to normal, with no increase of insulin needed.

I called Tandem and explained the issue. Due to them being a new company, they can’t exactly just replace pumps off of suspicion, they need proof. So I was denied a replacement at first. I pressed on, and even had my endo write a note stating that he also felt it needed to be replaced and that the one I had couldn’t be trusted. What finally allowed me to get a replacement was that I had put my first t:slim to sleep earlier in the year (like, around April) when I was going to go off of it until they fixed an issue the pump has with reverse-correction (well, it’s not really an issue.. just a lacking feature that’s being fixed soon) and by doing so, it messed up something in the memory mechanism of the pump. Seeing as how that was the only thing that could be technically proven over the phone, I stressed that even though that was the only thing they could tell on their end, there was no way of knowing unless they had the pump back to inspect it that if by putting it in shelf mode that something else had happened. (So, whatever you do.. if you have a t:slim insulin pump.. NEVER EVER PUT IT IN SHELF MODE unless you’re sending it back to Tandem!)

Yesterday, I received the replacement t:slim. Since I had only been wearing the pod for one day and I’m limited on how many of those I have left, I decided to wait until Friday to put on the new t:slim. Then, today, I started thinking… maybe I need to just suspend the pod so I can use it again if needed, and put the t:slim on. So that’s what I’ve done.

So far, I’ve noticed a few things that my first t:slim didn’t do the same way, so I’m thinking maybe there was something really messed up with it and I didn’t know it. All I can say is that I’m thankful that Tandem did replace it. And, also I’ve bolused for a pretty good sized lunch and it still seems to be working just fine.