Pre-Trial Thoughts About Participating In The Medtronic MiniMed 640g Pump Trial

Well Thursday's the big day... I'm going to be starting my trial of the Medtronic MiniMed 640G insulin pump. The trial will hopefully last 64 days in total and I'll be regularly blogging and vlogging about my experience with it. Whilst putting the pump through its paces during everyday life and high performance sport. But before starting the trial I wanted to provide a bit of background on my experience with pumps to put it all into context and to also talk about my feelings at the prospect of trying the new pump.

I've had type 1 diabetes for 14 years and for 7 of those I was on injections and for the other 7 I've been on an insulin pump. So pumping is not a new thing to me, but this type of technology in a pump is. I was encouraged to consider an insulin pump by my medical team all those years ago because I was becoming insulin resistant with relation to my insulin injections. This meant that even on a good day I would be on anything up to 10 injects a day and had a hba1c of 9.7%, a value that was too high anyway. But especially when considering my diet was right and I was training up to 6 days a week for athletics. Or so I thought, as the insulin resistance may well have been caused by undiagnosed coeliac disease.

When I first went onto a pump it was a Medtronic one, but it looked very different to the MiniMed 640G. It was black and I was so grateful to have one, but I couldn't get on with the 90 degree angle sets as my body type just wasn't right for them and the pumps weren't waterproof, so training outdoors was tricky. I then moved across to an Animas pump and have been on that for the time being, there've been ups and downs with it. But I love being an insulin pump user as a whole, because of the freedom it gives me in terms of lifestyle and training. But at the same time, because of the control it gives me of my blood glucose levels. I honestly don't know if I'd have discovered the coeliac disease without my pump and the level of predictability that it provides.

I'm really excited to be starting the Medtronic MiniMed 640G trial Thursday, I've heard really good things about the pump from other people with diabetes. But I want to see for myself how being able to prevent some of the hypos I experience could impact both on my sport and my day-to-day life. So watch this space for updates and please feel free to post questions and comments about it all and I'll my best to answer honestly. You can also follow my progress in pictures on Instagram using the handle @Torchbearer2012 and on Twitter with @MelStephenson01

The Medtronic MiniMed 640g