How to: Use the Missed Bolus Reminder

My charger for the transmitter stopped working last evening, 2/2/15; I called medtronics and was told it would take 3 days to ship; I mentioned by extreme hypoglycemic problem and asked her manager and said it would ship and arrive today, 2/3/15; I received a call and message from Medtronics later that evening stating they didn't have any chargers in stock;
What? What happened? You had stock earlier; call back with no stock? This is the 2nd item from Medtronics that wasn't available to ship. The first was a sensor; that was last week 1/25/15; now the chargers......again I have extreme lows and happens when I sleep. Last year I never had an issue with Medtronic's stock; what has happened? Have you experienced this problem? I don't have a transmitter charged to place a sensor to read. There's got to be a better way! Oh, but I did receive a package to return the failed charger
early this morning....9 a.m. NDA a return envelope....ridiculous.

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After reading the article, I discovered that Model 523 also has the missed bolus reminder. No one ever mentioned it to me, nor do I recall reading of it. With gastroparesis, almost all boluses must be delayed, so I've forgotten several times - just turned on the newly-discovered feature. Medtronic sent me a new 523 just a year ago, so the model is obviously current; I hope you'll contact all 523 users about it.

I use the missed bonus feature but sometimes receive the missed bonus alert after I have received the first missed bonus alert and have responded to it with my food bonus. Could y ou explain this and advise me on this. Thanks

Naomi,
Thanks so much for this article! I did not know about this feature but thanks to you I know have activated it and I can rest assured that I will no longer miss a bolus! Things do get hectic in our everyday lives and this is just one more thing to help us control our blood sugars. God bless you! Rita

Hello Naomi,
This is not related to the Bolus reminder, hope you don't mind . I have often wondered why Medtronic doesn't have speaking pumps and speaking meters for Diabetics, since diabetes can and does lead to blindness. I have had diabetes since age 2-1/2 and I am now 55. I have no sight in my left eye, and a cataract in my good eye- which I am nervous about having it removed. I have spoke with a phone representative about it, but have not heard about it or read about it. Could you please point me in the right direction or have someone contact me about this issue.

Thank you

Thank you so much for the article on Bolus reminders. I never knew it existed. Now I can be safer with having this to help me in case I forget, which has happened in the past. Especially when I am in a hurry and just want to eat lunch and get on with my day. What a great help this will be. Thank you Medtronics . I really love Medtronics having had Diabetes for 50 years, the pump has made it easier to cope with the disease.

Thanks for this post Naomi, I'd forgotten about this feature of my pump. I'm in the process of fine tuning my basal and bolus rates due to life changes. Due to occasional lows before meals I have delayed bolusing at times. Sometimes I realize after the fact I have forgotten to bolus entirely. I'm now set up so this doesn't happen. I do wish that there was a feature that I could set different reminders for different days of the weeks.

Like others here, I chose for a long time not to employ this as [I believe] I have enough alarming as it is, particularly nuisance alarming from such things as Low Reservoir (we get two even though after one we know we've a low reservoir) and Meter BG (we get one every hour even though we acknowledged the first one and it might be a few hours until we can get to a meter to check against and we already have the alarm on the BG graph). But after reading this post I'll try using the missed bolus, primarily for the following:

I nearly always (97% of the time) use Normal bolus instead of a Square Wave or Dual Wave...but sometimes I do use the Square Wave. As we know, Square wave bolusing with the wizard requires one additional entry, the square wave time. Once the bolus is finished, however, the default bolus type now becomes Square Wave, not Normal. As I use a Normal bolus 97% of the time, I almost always enter my BG, my Food, and, like a robot, I press ACT three more times while listening for two beeps...assuming I've just started the bolus and I put the pump back in the case and move on. But the pump, now defaulted to Square Wave, is instead waiting for a Square Wave time, and will eventually alarm (which I won't hear as the pump is put away) and fail to deliver a bolus as it was incomplete. Sure, my robot-like entry process is flawed...but we all do such shortcuts after having programmed 40,000+ boluses over the years.

Even if I have a correct Square Wave bolus entered and it's currently timing, and if, during that active Square Wave, I correctly enter a Normal bolus and the normal bolus finishes delivery before the end of the square wave time, the pump will still [unfortunately] default to Square Wave, even though the last bolus I programmed was Normal. This has tripped me up a dozen times in the past, as I assumed the default was based on the last bolus type entered.

Possibly, Missed Bolus might help me with both of these types of self-inflicted errors. I'll continue to evaluate the number of nuisance alarms from this feature vs. valid alarming.

I do appreciate these blog posts, thank you Naomi!

Thank you so much for the article; like some others, I too was unaware of the missed bolus reminder, and when I read about it, I immediately set my pump for lunch and supper reminders! But how about this: I occasionally put the pump in suspense, esp. if I'm running a lot or pretty hard, and I often forget that it is in suspense. Other times I put it in suspense and forget about doing so, and when I remember a few HOURS later and check my FSBS, it's really high. How about an alarm to remind us- at least every 1/2 hour-that the pump is suspended?

This is an interesting feature, but what I am in more critical need of is a "bolus entry timed out" alarm. I have had my new pump for about 6 months, and I have had at least 4 occasions where I have checked my blood sugar several hours after a meal and it is very high. I go to the pump to enter some insulin to reduce it and note that display reads "Bolus entry timed out before delivery. If bolus intended, enter values again" message is displayed. This NEVER occurred with my old pump (although there were occasions where I actually completely forgot to enter my bolus... once I told it to deliver it the bolus would be delivered). The first two times this occurred, I figured that it was because I was still getting used to the new pump... but now that I have had it for over half a year and this continues to occur I want to find out if something can be done about it.

If I tell the pump to deliver a bolus and then I forget to push the final "yes, please really deliver it" button, why doesn't the pump give me a continuous alarm - similar to what occurs for a blockage that causes the basel or a bolus to stop - until I acknowledge that the pump has decided that it will not deliver what I started to ask it to deliver? There should be an option to turn an audible alarm on if I select a bolus amount but do not deliver the insulin, starting something like 60 seconds after I do not acknowledge that the requested bolus has timed out.

If I have missed a setting somewhere in the pump that accomplishes the above, can you please let me know how to activate it? If not, can you please consider it as an update?

Thanks

Thank you for this post. I missed two boluses two days in a row. I received a VEO pump a few months ago and didn't know about this feature.