A month ago, my insulin pump started giving me more frequent alarms. Most of them have been “dead battery” alarms, when I know there has been a brand new battery in there. One day it told me pump was without power (ie – dead battery) in the middle of each meal bolus of the day. I really can’t complain. This little piece of amazing technology has been on my hip for close to 5 years now. It has been bumped on door frames and dropped on tile floors more times than I can count. It’s well past its warranty and I’ve never had any major problem with it. But when it was clear where my pump was heading, I made sure that I had all my current basal and alarm settings written down.

One morning a couple of weeks ago, as I did a routine cartridge change, the pump simply couldn’t recognise there was a cartridge there. I must have tried to rewind a dozen times but eventually, there was a single, unending BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP and a “Your-pump-is-dead-please-call-your-doctor-or-pump-rep.” message.

My backup plan in the event of pump failure is that I have a second pump at home. This is possible because I still wear a Cozmo and since there are only a few of us Cozmo users left on the planet, my pump supply company was willing to give me an extra one on “permanent loan”. This one is also almost 5 years old, but never been used so it felt brand new as I punched in all my personalised settings.

This event of course gave me another chance to ponder pump choices, but they haven’t changed since my post in July so I’m still sticking to the status quo. And the extra good news in all of this is that my pump supply company managed to get me a brand new black Cozmo. I couldn’t believe they still had one in stock! So I am set to go for another few years – either until they run out of Cozmo reservoirs or until a more interesting pump comes out on the French market. 2015 should see the release of the Accu-Chek Insight,
The Medtronic Minimed 640g, 

And the Ypsopump. 

Just so you don’t think I’m too set in my ways (is 11+ years with the same insulin pump too much?), I’m excited to see some new options in pumping coming to the European market and I will be looking carefully at my possibilities to modernise! In the meantime, I programmed my blue Cozmo replacement pump while waiting for the new black one to arrive and I the colour grew on me. Plus my 4 and 6 year old daughters think it is SO much prettier and would be mad if I went back to the black one. Blue Cozmo it is then! I always have the new black one to fall back on.

(The old black one has now gone back to my pump supplier but I was amused to have 3 for a short time!)