Advice Sought for New Pump

[ikoniclast]

Hi Pumpers--

I have been a satisfied pump user for more than 25 years. Started
with a Mill Hill Infuser in 1979; progressed to a Medtronic in the
early 1980's and stayed with Minimed 506 until I switched
endocrinologists about 18 months ago. Started reading discussions on
this site during summer 2007, and had about decided to switch to a
Cozmore, when I fell into the hands of a very clever marketing
representative from Diesetronic and ended up with a Spirit. (No
excuses for allowing myself to go along against my better judgement;
accept my fault, but that's ancient history) From the day I started
with the Spirit I have basically hated it, and now am at my wits end,
and I seek your suggestions.

I won't detail the many reasons I hate the Spirit, but it is summed up
by the fact that the design/programming team apparently were so
focused on preventing the user from doing anything "dangerous" that a
person's main interaction with the pump seems to be turning off
unnecessary and un-removeable alarms. Although I was persuded to buy
in part by the representation that "you can reprogram the pump to do
essentially anything you want in any order," the truth is that you
cannot reprogram virtually anything. E.g., if you want to display the
time and amount of the last bolus before giving yourself the next one,
you can't program that order of the displays. You have to proceed to
step 7 (from the display screen) to get the last-bolus info; then go
back to step1 to initiate the next one. If you travel to any
significant extent, your pump's memory is useless; every time you
change the pump's time setting, you make all the information since the
last download totally inaccessible; it has been wiped out. E.g., if
you go to Europe (or just the other coast) for a week or two and reset
your pump's time while you are there as you would your watch's, your
data are gone. (Guess the designers think we are too dumb to take the
time-change in stride.)

But here's the real rub, the company has just notified me that they
have "replaced" the syringe ("cartridge") which they formerly supplied
at the time I purchased the pump with a new "cartridge system" which
is the same syringe but without the needle and supplied with an
attached transfer-mechanism which consists of a plastic device that
connects the syringe to the insulin bottle. I notified the company as
soon as I received these new cartridges that I found them totally
unsatisfactory. For one thing, once the cartridge and the insulin
bottle are joined, there is no way you can tilt the mini-needle part
inside the insulin bottle toward the deep part of the insulin, so you
get a lot of air into the cartridge; and then you cannot get the air
out (again because you can't tilt the needle with respect to the
insulin) except by putting the partially-filled cartridge into the
pump and then throwing a significant amount of the insulin away in the
course of getting the unwanted air out. Also, you typically get a
fair amount of air into the infusion set, and have to throw away some
of that insulin away too. Although for some time the company
continued to supply me with the old-style syringes at my request, I
was told for the current 90-day order of supplies that the company
can no longer provide the old style syringes because it does not have
any more; the company which owns Diesetronic, the manufacturer of both
the old and the new cartridges, no longer produces any of the old
style. And of course no one else produces similar 315 ml syringes
either. So there are no decent cartridges availalble.

The pump came with a 4-year guarantee, of which about 1.5 year are
gone.

Have you got any recommendations for a pump company that won’t do the
same thing to me by making various essential components of its system
unavailable within the warranty period?

More significantly, do you think that your insulin pump system has a
whole lot of flexibility and that its built-in “protections” can be
reasonably worked around?

If so, I’d love to hear whatever you may have to say. Thanks!
ikoni...@aol.com