Do you find it worrisome that Medtronic thinks it's okay for a pump to fail to administer 9.8 units

I'm a little frustrated and at the same time, wondering if I am completely wrong about my son's pump not working as it should. He had his first pump a little over a year. His numbers became so bazaar. Then, I discovered that a correction by his pump would not bring his numbers down, but a simple injection did....multiple times. So, in my mind it clearly was the pump. Medtronic did the series of testing with me over the phone and replaced the pump.

Basically the testing consists of you clamping off the tubing and "filling the cannula" with 10 units of insulin instead of the normal .3 or so. Supposedly, the pump is designed to sense the build up of pressure which causes a "NO DELIVERY" alarm. I knew this when I got the second pump and tested it myself before he used it. When we first got it, we got the "NO DELIVERY" alarm after about 1.5 units so I figured the second pump was fine at that point.

Fast forward about a year with our second pump and my son's numbers have been doing the same thing. This time, when I called Medtronic, through the series of testing they determined it was functioning as it should. It took the pump failing to deliver 9.8 units of insulin before we got a "NO DELIVERY" alarm.

It is scary to me that for example, my son could bolus with 5 units of insulin, the pump may fail to administer the insulin (resulting in extreme highs) and then out of no where..release it without warning (resulting in extreme lows).

Am I crazy or has anyone else struggled with this? Medtronic is sending a replacement, but doesn't seem too happy about it. Of course, I don't really care what they think when it comes to my son's safety, but I don't like feeling guilty either.

 

I think Medtronic is replacing pumps less quickly than they were when we first bought my daughter's. We had one replaced that was working fine because she happened to mention to them that it had been submerged. More recently they told me that we had to get at least two "motor errors" within 30 days for them to replace it. I called back the next day and asked again, saying that I wasn't comfortable having my daughter wear a pump which had already had problems with the motor not working properly.

 

I think medtronic has two types of pumps: ones that are very sensitive and shoot off no-deliveries all the time, and ones that are much less sensitive and would need a huge buildup to give a no-delivery error. Personally, I'd like the less sensitive ones.

We had one that was giving errors left and right. It was massively annoying. Medtronic really gave me a hard time about replacing it. It had been a replacement for a broken pump, and as soon as we received it we started having trouble. Of course medtronic wanted to put the blame on us. Yes, all of a sudden after pumping for 6 years or so, using the same sets, we were inserting them incorrectly, and that's what was causing the errors. (sarcasm there). I finally got them to replace it. In my mind, the only thing that had changed was this new pump and prior to this new pump we almost never had No Delivery errors. So, silly me, I just figured that was the problem. OF course after we got the replacement pump we've had no errors.

On the other hand, I've never tested this pump to see what would cause a no-delivery. But 9.8 u does seem awfully high.

 

9.8 units would be about 60% of my daughters daily insulin, Lately I have not been impressed with Medtronic customer service, it is very spotty, some reps are very good, others seem to care less