Tuesday, October 23, 2007

My First Alarm!

Last night after a great 5 mile run I'm watching my Tivo'd episode of Kitchen Nightmares while eating my dinner. I had cooked some brown rice, peas and scallops - came out pretty tasty. As I sat there on my couch I heard this weird beeping; is my smoke alarm going off? Nope, hmm carbon monoxide? Nope, not that either - oh man it must be my computer crashing, No that didn't work; is something in my kitchen about to blow up? No everything is fine....

Wait I'm beeping! I pull my pump out of my pocket and read "No Delivery". I had heard complaints about the minimed alarms before but NEVER thought it would be this weak! Seriously people I'm insulin dependent for a reason one would think if my medical device is not delivering that stuff that keeps me alive it would screech not play a lovely musical medley. I've since changed the reservoir and infusion set but it was an interesting experience.

If you haven't had a chance to watch Kitchen Nightmares yet I highly suggest checking it out. Gordon Ramsey is at his best in it and as a foodie I love seeing awful restaurants turned around. It also lets you see how incredibly dense some people are!

6 comments:

Shannon said...

I love watching that show. I catch it on BBC America where they have the British version (duh). I love how Gordon kicks their asses into shape.

Your Minimed plays lovely music? It's good it was fixable and you didn't have to ship it off.

Unknown said...

Yeah, that pump alarm isn't too alarming, is it? If you want annoying noise, try my garbage truck, which I blogged about today. Unfortunately, no Kitchen shows in Taiwan, except Top Chef, which I've seen before. Bleh.

Your dinner sounds delish!

Scott S said...

My first pump alarm scared the hell out of me! Then again, I had an Animas pump, and the alarm sounded like a siren from a firetruck, so you're probably lucky that Minimed's are much less intrusive.

Anonymous said...

Yes, those MM alarms are pretty quiet. My wife usually hears it before I do.

I use a Paradigm 512, and if yours is similar, maybe setting the "alert type" on the ALARM MENU to "vibrate" would lessen the chance of missing it if it happens again.

Thankfully, you didn't need to return a busted pump to MM. I did once, and it taught me to always keep an up-to-date, written record of my basals on hand.

Anonymous said...

Yes, the alarms are too quiet. The options you have are to set the alarm to medium or loud (which annoys my son on a daily basis), or vibrate, but if you are semi-conscious, no one else would hear an alarm from the pump.

For those using the CGMS, I learned that a lapel mic from Radio Shack, placed right next to the pump (as in a pump pouch) and hooked up to computer speakers will allow a parent to hear their child's pump alarms and not all the other noise and static they would hear if using a baby monitor.

Cara said...

I HATE no delivery! They make my life horrible. But not enough to go off the pump! And I agree about the alarm on the pump. I think that's my one complaint w/ MiniMed: the alarms are not loud enough!