Monday, June 4, 2007

Picked a Pump!

After countless hours of research and loosing way too many minutes of sleep stressing about which pump to pick I finally came to a decision. I'm going with the Minimed Paradigm 522 pump, contrary to what I had earlier stated. After exhausting every possible shred of information I came to the conclusion that the 522 was the best pump for me.

During my trial of the 522 I absolutely loved that I could access the bolus wizard by simply hitting the "B" button on the pump - this took about 3 less steps than the Animas 2020 would have. Also, I felt the way the bolus wizard worked was more intuitive and provided better information than the Animas 2020.

After reading some awful reviews of the OneTouch meters on Six Until Me I came to the realization that Minimed puts out a better overall product than the Animas/ J&J team does. I have to base my future expectations on the past performance of the Animas family of products; the glucowatch has proven to be unreliable and OneTouch meters don't seem to be as accurate as the competition. Also, I expect a company that is just 6 years old to have been more innovative than they have been to date. While the 2020 has a better design and a great color screen I just don't think it stacks up against the functionality of the Minimed. I'm trying to live a healthy life not win a fashion contest so I went with the practical decision.

I'll have the full tale of the tape to more fully illustrate my decision but I wanted to share my excitement with the rest of the blogosphere! I can't wait to get on the pump and start experiencing some of its benefits.

4 comments:

Dances with Corgis said...

"After exhausting every possible shred of information" could be the understatement of the century. :)

Good call on choosing performance and function over aethetics with the 2020. Were those the purple ones?

Bernard said...

I'm going to try the Animas out later in the year before I replace my aging Minimed 512. So your take on it is interesting.

If you're looking for a good meter, I'd strongly recommend the WaveSmith KeyNote from AgaMatrix, really fast and they claim the reliability is good. I posted a video on YouTube showing it in action.

For more information on meters, pumps, etc., check out the CWD site.

And welcome to the blogosphere. Wow, barely 2 months since diagnosis, that's a lot of change.

Bernard said...

Oh, and you may want to get into the Diabetes OC community.

Caro said...

Hi,

I just found your blog today. As a pumper of more than 5 years and a current 522 user, I have to commend your choice! Good luck for the pump start, and congratulations on taking such a pro-active approach to your diagnosis.

Caro

P.S I'm a former Animas devotee - I used the IR1200 until 9 months ago when I switched to the 522 for the CGM - so I did want to defend them a little. J&J only took the company over relatively recently. Animas had nothing to do with actual development of the Glucowatch, which they took on from Cygnus who in turn never had anything to do with Animas pumps. Same goes for the OneTouch meters, which J&J acquired from a separate company called Lifescan. So I'm not sure if it is worthwhile to base future expectations of Animas on those products with which they had no involvement.