The Box, Chapter 2

Damn. I’m over here and the Box, if it came, is over there. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays are my clinic days. 8am to 6pm. When I started a year ago the clinic had 88 diabetes patients. We now have 177 and growing every day. That was in no way relevant, I just wanted to brag.

On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays I’m still at the Lab/ Studio.

Thursdays are the wild card day.

I haven’t developed a split personality yet, but I’m sure it is only a matter of time.

Oooooops. Got off track again. Regular readers know my mind tends to wander, and my typing fingers with it… Back to the Box. I’m told the Box is coming today. I had it sent to the lab ‘cause the clinic is a busy, crazy, frantic place where packages seem to go astray and I sure as hell didn’t want this one going astray.

So I gotta wait till I get home to see if it came. To open it. To ooooooo and ahhhhhhhh over it’s contents. Christmas in April.

I love my job, but I really want to go home and open the box! The Box with my new pump and CGM. Well, not necessary mine for ever, but mine to use.

So I’m pretty excited about giving the MiniMed pump a try. I’ve often been asked why I chose the pump I chose. Well, that was a couple of years ago and I can barely remember last Tuesday…but as I recall it all happened very fast and went something like this:

I was visiting my Endo when the subject of a pump came up. My pharmacist was on a pump and she told me “ask your Doc about pumps.” So I did. I only had the haziest understanding of what pumping was all about at the time.

My Endo thought I’d be a great pumper, and was very enthusiastic. She sent me home with three info packs. One MiniMed, One CoZmo, One Animas. Call me in a few days and I’ll get the paper work going. She told me most patients where on MiniMeds, but that the CoZmo was good for control enthusiasts like me. She had only met the Animas rep a few days before, but the pump looked OK to her.

I had a terrible cold at the time. I remember lying in bed with my laptop and the three info kits. I never met with any pump reps, never got to see or handle the devices, or even talk to someone who used a pump. Hard to compare features when you don’t understand the technology.

But it went something like this. I liked the Medtronic, especially the look and overall size. At the time the wireless BG monitor had just been released and sounded cool, but it was getting a bad rap online. It also seemed enormous compared to my little Freestyle Flash. The CoZmo had the clip on meter, and I liked that all-in-one idea. I liked the look of the Animas (the old one) the best, and it was the thinnest. It also had a built in carb data base and I liked that idea. However, their info kit was worthless. Their pump also had no way of receiving BG data other than entering it manually. They were out.

Using an out-of-date comparison chart on the web, I mistakenly thought the MiniMed pump took button batteries (the old ones did, but not true anymore), so I really liked the fact that the CoZmo took the most common battery in the world: AAA.

The CoZmo was water proof too, and the MiniMed only water-resistant. I don’t know why that mattered to me, ‘cause I generally don’t go swimming. However, I’ve twice been swept away by flood waters in my old career as a photojournalist…so maybe that came in to play in my subconscious.

As it turns out, the point is moot. Once you put the CoZmonitor on it the rig is no longer water proof, or even water-resistant in the least. I liked the fact that CoZmo used a lurer lock, rather than a propriety system. I had no idea what length of tubing, or how big an insulin supply I’d need.

The thing that won me over in the end, was the fact that the CoZmo info kit had the actual start-up video/CD included. The Medtronic kit only had a promotional CD about the joys of pumping. I was already sold on pumping, I wanted to know how the damn thing worked. The CoZmo CD took me though how it worked in pain-staking detail. Oh, yeah!

So I chose the Smith Deltec CoZmo because it had an attached glucomonitor, was water proof (I thought), used a universal infusion set, used readily available batteries (except for the aforementioned glucomonitor, which luckily uses the same button batteries that my son’s pocket electronic battleship game uses), and it had a cool belt clip.

I got the pump and hated it almost immediately. First off the belt clip I liked didn’t work with the meter on. The meter, “only as thick as a few sticks of gum,” made the damn thing pretty thick to live with. The software was awful. You could program the pump easily, but the glucose reports only came in log-book form. No graphics. My sugar went bonkers and I didn’t get a handle on the whole pumping thing until Abbott released Co-Pilot with a CoZmo down load feature.

They also took foooooooorever to get me pump training.

But I adapted and got use to it. I like the pump just fine, but I’m looking forward to a new adventure. To a new approach to the same problems. I think it will be fun to compare and contrast the two pump systems. But let’s not forget the icing on the cake. This new machine is more than a pump. It is PumpPlus. It will monitor my BG and give me a head’s up when things go south. Or north. Or east. Or west. Speaking of east of here…

I wonder if the box is there yet?