My son has been wearing a medtronic pump for 3 years (he is 7 years old). We have exclusively used his rear for pump sites and have had no problems. I recently tried to push to move his pump site to another location. His dad wears his pump sites exclusively in the stomach, so I thought that would be a good place to try. He is very thin, but my husband and I thought we could give his stomach a try. He already wears a dexcom receiver on his upper arm, so that is not an option. Last night we did our first insertion in the stomach. It was a little uncomfortable at first, but everything seemed to be fine. During the night his blood sugar steadily climbed; by the time I finally got up he was at 423! I went ahead and put a site back on his rear-end and blood sugar was back down to the 100s this morning. Has anyone FAILED at stomach sites with a skinny kid? Any other possible site locations?
My son is very thin, and we found that we can do stomach sites on him only with an angled site. The 90 degree sites are fine on his bum, but they just didn't seem to work at all on his stomach. Like your experience, he would just go high and higher. So we alternate between straight sites on his bum and angled sites on his stomach. As far as other areas to try, we occasionally use his thighs too. He finds it a bit awkward there, so we don't use it often. My son also puts his Dex sensors on his arms, so we never put pump sites there.
How about swapping the Dexcom and pump site placement. My dd wears in both places but it might be harder to figure out with a boy and how the wear the pump. Have you tried the outer thigh? While we can do the tummy she "feels" the site and the insulin and it bothers her.
My son isn't that thin (he's normal, I'd say) and we have had some trouble with stomach sites. We used quicksets for a long time and had no trouble, but suddenly we started having a lot of bad sites in his stomach. Now we only use sure-t sets on his stomach because of enough bent cannulas. We order a variety of sets each time we order, because he prefers different sets for different locations. If your DS isn't scared by the actual needle, I would give those a try for stomach. Good luck.
My son is very thin too. We mostly use stomach sites. He uses comfort shorts. He also uses his legs sometimes, but isn't keen on them. I know some people have used the bottom, but we haven't tried that as I would have to do it and a 17 year old isn't going to let that happen.
My daughter will NOT use tummy sites for anything. We've used upper butt/outer hip for 8 years with no problems.
We, so far, have only used stomach sites and my daughter is thin, but she doesn't wear "slim" sized clothes or anything. She/we just can't pinch up anywhere else except the back of her arms and she wears her dexcom there - her butt is like a rock and she has no love handles to speak of. I guess all kids are built differently.
Could it be you need a different type of set for the stomache? I had no real success with the quick sets (6 out of 9 failed), and somewhat better luck with sure Ts (14 out of 18 didn't fail). My pump trainer claimed that for skinny adults, stomach sites are best and for skinny kids, hip sites. I've found that hip sites work better than stomach sites for me, but not by much.
My daughter is skinny, wears "slim" clothes and we can't use her stomach either. Regardless of the fact that she's ridiculously against the stomach, there's just not enough fat
My 8yo is very slender and wore sites on her stomach the first maybe, 6 months of pumping. (I have always worn my sites on my stomach too but I have much more 'real estate') She switched to her upper butt area after that (for almost 2 years now) and will not go back to stomach. She says her behind is much more comfortable- there is more meat on her there. I can pinch maybe 1/2 an inch on her behind and nothing on her stomach. Also I want to point out that she has little white dot 'scars' on her tummy now that the Dr. said is normal. She is still hoping they go away but have been there a long while now. She only gets the scars on her tummy, not behind. So maybe the stomach is just not comfortable for some kids. I wish we had another area to use too but she refuses to try any other spots.
My daughter wont use stomach. She is very skinny so it bothers her. We used the butt and upper hips alternating. The butt area is getting dented in (the doctors don't know what this is) and have lost 2 needles, so we don't use that area anymore, now just the upper hips. I wish there were more places she would use as we are running out of real estate
