After 2 Years on OmniPod, switched to Medtronic

I used the Omni Pod system for 2 years and was at first pretty happy with it but have recently switched to a Medtronic and am both happier with it and am having better control results.

The OmniPod was my first pump after 30 years of injections so I didn't have a great basis for comparison to other pumps, only to injections.

The OmniPod experience was an upgrade from injections in terms of convenience, and I loved it at first, but I actually had worse control than on injections due to the number of spikes I expierienced with pod failures, PDM failures and the fact that for some reason I would spike super high with every single pod change. My A1C went up rather than down as I was expecting.

About a year and a half in to my experience, I started noticing an increase in quality problems. The percentage of pods out of each box that would fail went up. Not only were the pods problematic, but my controller had to be replaced twice and the replacements had the same issues (freezing up and saying PDM error - which required you to take ofF the current pod, reset the PDM by sticking a paperclip in the back of it, and then put on a new POD.) In addition to wasting a lot of expensive insulin, it was getting frustrating having to go through so many more insertions than the once every three days that pods are supposed to last.

Having never been on a pump, when I picked the OmniPod as my first pump I truly think I was over estimating how annoying or troublesome tubing would be, and I therefore overestimated the value of a pump being tubeless.

Here's the thing - in exchange for being tubeless, the pods themselves that adhere to your skin are actually pretty large. Far larger than a traditional set - so for me, there was a bigger area that got itchy under the adhesive. Wherever I wore them you could see the big bulge under my clothes. They extend far enough out that I had to be careful not to rip them off going through doorways and getting into my car. In addition, I found they disrupted my sleep. Maybe I'm like the princess and the pea - but every time I rolled over onto one, I felt it and woke up and I would have to plan what position I would sleep in according to where I was wearing the pod. When I switched to Mimimed, I not only didn't find the tubing troublesome but had the first truly comfortable night of sleep in two years.

With the OmniPod, the insertion set is built in and so you only have one choice in terms of the length of the cannula that goes in you and what angle it goes in at. If a 9mm cannuala inserted at an angle works for you, great. If not, you are out of luck, cause that's the only choice. Whereas with my new Minimed, I can choose from a variety of insertion sets offering different cannula lengths and insertion angles. It turns out that for me, I'm getting far better control using a 6 mm cannula that inserts straight in (the mimimed softset). I didn't have any options with OmniPod - there's just more things you can tinker with on a traditional pump if you aren't getting good results to try to get better results. The mini med even has a metal needle set option for people with allergies to the stuff cannulas are made of. When I picked out the Omnipod as my first pump, I truly didn't understand how important having customizable options would be to me since you have to use your pump 24/7 with no vacations or breaks.

Finally - I found the OmniPod alarms pretty annoying and you couldn't customize those either (no vibrate option.) Pod error alarms were sometimes impossible to turn off - they would keep wailing away for a day or two after the pod was removed and you could hear it throughout the house. At one point I had four pods lined up in my garage just shrieking away. Put them out there because there was no place in the house to put them where they couldn't be heard throughout the entire house. There is supposed to be a place you can press that turns them off but it usually didn't work. Hitting them with a hammer didn't even work. (Yes - I tried that in frustration more than once).

I'm not anti-Omni Pod - I truly do believe it's a great option for some and not workable at all for others. The same can probably be said for most pumps I would imagine. No one pump is going to be the best choice for everyone. In conclusion, below are what I found to be the biggest likes and dislikes during my two year use of OmniPod:

Advantages/Likes

Automatic Insertion feature is terrific, really terrific. I miss it.
Customer service was wonderful - always tried their best
Having the blood meter built right into the PDM was great
PDM was easy to read - great backlit feature
Relatively inexpensive to get started (though ongoing cost is higher)
Very discreet to use because of wireless

Biggest Disadvantages/Dislikes

Uncomfortable to wear - I was always conscious of it/feeling it
Uncomfortable to sleep in
Limited my choice of clothing to baggy stuff - otherwise it stuck out
Ripping/knocking off pods pretty easy to do
Unacceptably high error rate of Pods and PDMs
The alarms drove me nuts when they wouldn't shut off or would go off during work meetings and I couldn't get them to stop.

I have only been using the MiniMed revel I replaced my pod with for a few weeks, but so far I am much happier with it. Better control, less discomfort and annoyance and though getting started was very expensive, I'm finding it will be cheaper in the long-run.