My son was diagnosed with Diabetes Type I when he was three years old. We struggled with his blood sugar levels for years until one of his physician’s about two years ago suggested he be put on an insulin pump to try to improve his control levels.
His physician gave us a couple of suggestions on insulin pumps, with high recommendation for the Deltec Cozmo insulin pump or the MiniMed Insulin pump but he highly suggested using the Deltec Cozmo insulin pump for someone my son’s age. He was 12 years old at the time.
We fought for several months with the insurance company and finally received his new insulin pump. We went through a brief training course with a nurse educator at his physician’s office and learned about the different things that his new insulin pump could do.
The Deltec Cozmo Insulin pump comes with a software program that you can load onto your computer, you will have to purchase an USB Infrared cable that will attach to the computer and communicate with the insulin pump. The software give you the ability to program the pump from your computer, you can even personalize the insulin pump by naming it. You type in all of the information into the program such as basal rates, correction factors and insulin to carb ratio’s for meals then after entering the program into the computer you can send the program from your computer to the insulin pump for easy set up. You can also set it up by hand if you don’t have access to a computer. The computer is just another alternative for faster set up and personalization for the pump.
The pump now comes with a glucose monitor that attaches to the pump itself, it uses fast take test strips, your pump recognizes the strip when inserted into the monitor and when the glucose is read it is transferred directly into the insulin pump so that it helps eliminate the possibility of error in transferring the reading into the pump. It has a bolus calculator in the pump that will recognize the programmed information and all you have to do is program in the amount of carbohydrates that you are going to be eating and it will tell you how much insulin is needed to correct the raise in glucose levels, it will even ask you, during the process, if you want to program in the correction at the same time and it will recognize the glucose reading that was read by the pump and do the correction for you.
Other features of the Deltec Cozmo insulin pump include, alarms that will alarm you to test your blood sugar again when you have had a high or low reading in the appropriate amount of time after the reading, you can set different alarms to remind you when to test, you can set alarms to go off if you haven’t set a bolus by a certain time of day, you have all kinds of options for the alarms on the pump to help you with your memory and what to do when.
This little pump is small in size and comes in several different options of colors including clear, coal, blue, and gray. It has the option to lock out the keys if you don’t want the child to program the pump by his or herself, depending on the age of the child, to protect the child from accidental overdoses. There is a touch bolus feature on this pump also that you have the option of using or turning off if you don’t want the child using this option. The touch bolus feature gives the child the ability to automatically inject an amount of insulin with the touch of a button, this feature is good for use with children who eat the same amount of carbohydrates at snacks, for instance if the child always eats 30 grams of carb at snack and has an insulin to carb ratio of 1 unit for ever 10 carb that would be 3 units of insulin needed for each snack, you can program the touch bolus to always inject 3 units and all the child has to do at snack time is touch the button once and he or she will get the right amount of insulin for the snack without having to program in the carbs into the bolus calculator. This feature can be handy in some cases or you can turn off this feature and have the child use the bolus calculator at ever meal, whichever is more helpful in your particular case.
My son has had this insulin pump for over two years now and we have had very little trouble with the pump itself. When the Coz-Monitor attachment first came out we had several problems getting the monitor to work and had to have it replaced several times but like everything once they get the bugs out, everything will be fine and I never had any trouble getting a replacement. I would call Smith Medical and they would FedEx him another monitor overnight and send a return box for the broken monitor to be sent back to them.
If you are looking into the many different options of insulin pumps out there I would recommend the Deltec Cozmo Insulin Pump to anyone with a small child, it is very “kid friendly” and easy to program and run reports.
For more information on the Deltec Cozmo Insulin Pump go to http://www.cozmore.com and read for yourself on the many different features that are available to you with this pump.
