Question about Omnipod and insulin used in each pod

We are talking with pump companies and got permission to schedule our first pump class from our endo. I am hoping for a March start date.

Anyways I we got a pod demo for Abby today and talked with the rep. Abby is 2. Her TDD is about 8. Can someone who uses a Pod with a little one tell me if it is true you must fill with 80 UNITS. That seems like a lot of waste. Isn't that almost a vial? It would take us more than a month to use that. Or am I thinking about that wrong?

 

A vial is 1000 units, not 100 - it's 100u/mL, and 10mL per vial

I've heard you can pull out the extra insulin and reuse it, but you're not really supposed to.

However, if you assume you'll need 80u every 3 days to fill the pods, you'd still only need one vial a month... if one vial is lasting longer than that now, that's fine, but technically you "should" be throwing away that extra every 30 days anyways

 

Thank You

I thought I was wrong. That did not make any sense. When you use such tiny doses its hard to picture how much 80 units would be.

We are throwing out the left overs every month. I didn't mean to make it sound like it we are using it all up or anything.

Thanks

 

I don't have a little one anymore, but we put 200 units in at a time and we can do this several times with one vial Go for it!

 

80u is the minimum but I'd fill it with 100u just to be sure you don't sacrufice a pod due to not meeting the minimum fill to activate it. Even at 100u, that means 10 pods filled for each vial of insulin. And you never know when you might need some extra insulin in the event of illness, etc.

 

Then you won't be using up "more" - since it all gets tossed eventually

 

I agree with Daryl - it is our procedure to use 100U because, we think, the 80U minimum results in a few activation failures - or at least it used to. 10 pods @ 100U X 3 days = 30 days and 1000U and you are either at the expiry of the opened insulin or just running out. The reps will tell you that the insulin in the pod is in a sterile environment and that it's safe to remove what you can in the event of a pod failure or accidental removal. We almost never do this. The primary reason is because we don't have to - 90% of the time the insulin is tossed with some in the vial. When we get to the point where this becomes an issue of available insulin we might be more lenient. However, I suspect that, after showers and swimming, removing the insulin out of a pod would be less than sterile.

YMMV