Intro to Pumping Class on Thursday + Choosing My Pump

        Yes my little sugar free niblets, I am officially on the road to becoming a pumper of insulin. On Thursday I am scheduled in an introduction to pumping class at the children's hospital in my area. It's pretty ridiculous how excited I am. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I did a complete turnaround in my stance on insulin pumps. I hated the idea of being connected to something. I quickly got over that though when I saw all the benefits (oh yeah and all the cool kick butt features some of them have). So below I decided to include the pros and cons of the insulin pumps available in Canada right now that I considered and why I'm choosing the one I am.

OMNIPOD

Pros:
-No tubing
-Sophisticated PDM (personal diabetes manager)
-Don't have to see needle
-Cheaper than many other pumps

Cons:
-Wasted insulin if the "pod" fails
-Inability to disconnect
-Stranded if the PDM is lost
-Bulky under tight clothing/ no ability to relocate pump once attached


MEDTRONIC VEO

Pros:
-Integrated CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring)
-Customizable Skins
-Carelink

Cons:
-Not waterproof
-Low Resolution Screen


ANIMAS PING

Pros:
-Waterproof
-Meter-Remote (ability to deliver insulin using glucose meter without needing to remove pump from wherever it is stashed)
-Colour Screen (in Canada there is a high resolution colour screen on both the pump and meter remote)
-Carb database (store foods along with their carb values in the meter. Eliminates guesswork when calculating carbs)
-Customizable alert songs (that's just cool)
-Company will lend you a spare pump if you go on vacation in case something happens to yours

Cons:
-No CGM
-Limited options for skins


So by what I've written you can probably hazard a guess as to which one I've decided on. Animas Ping baby! For a while it was a little bit of a toss up between the Veo and the Ping (Sorry Omnipod, but I knew you weren't going to work for me after about five minutes). I really like the idea of continuous glucose monitoring especially since I will be at university next year. I would love to be able to catch any possible nighttime lows and know my BG and any given time. But in the end, I could just see myself using more of the features on the Ping (e.x I'm a lifeguard/ swimming instructor. The waterproof feature was kind of a no brainer.) I'm still hoping and crossing my fingers too that the stand alone cgm system Dexcom will be made available in Canada soon. Happy pumping everyone!!!