Dad’s First Pod Change

Last night dad did his first solo pod change! I had to work late and knew Ike would be due for a pod change while I was gone. I asked my husband if he thought he would be able to do the change himself as he has only observed so far. He was still uncomfortable drawing up the insulin (Ike used insulin pens before). I asked if he thought he could do it if I drew up the insulin before I left for work. He agreed to give it a go! I got this text at work:

I’m very proud that he stepped up!

Test Strip Love

We have been waiting what seems like FOREVER to see if the Freestyle test strips would be authorized as medical necessity since they are the strips Ike’s OmniPod uses and they aren’t normally covered by our insurance.

Well I received a call on Friday from Ike’s doctors office letting us know that the request for medical necessity was approved! Unfortunately when our pharmacy tried to run the script it kept getting rejected! Well I called Caremark today and talked to a girl who was amazing! She is the first person to tell me that while they provide the prescription benefits – another company, Allied Benefit, administers the plan and does all the authorizations! Finally I felt like I was getting somewhere!

I called Allied and talked to a extremely helpful rep who assured me that the authorization was approved, he checked with the prescription benefits coordinator who gave me a date to have my pharmacy run as the service start date. Thankfully, he also gave me a number, extension, name, and case number to have the pharmacy call in case it still didn’t work. It didn’t work – but my pharmacy was gladly willing to call!

I just heard back and it turns out they had associated the authorization with another family member and for that reason it wasn’t going through!

Ultimate goal achieved – a months worth of Freestyle test strips are now waiting to be picked up at the pharmacy! Ike is going to be one happy camper and personally – I never knew how much I love test strips!

Omnipod

It’s been awhile since I posted and we are still loving the Omnipod! Ike experienced his first pod failure at school a couple weeks ago and then another one the next day but we have been good since then! I called Omnipod Customer Care and they asked a few questions such as if I pinched up when doing the insertion, when the insulin vial I used expires, what the numbers on the pod were and how long had he been wearing the pod. They then told me that we would receive replacements in our next shipment! Nice!

School!

Tomorrow Ike starts back to school!! This is Ike’s second year of school with diabetes and I was a nervous wreck last year before school as everything was new! I’m nervous this year too – but I think I feel unprepared because we have only been pumping for a couple weeks. Our school nurse is fabulous and I LOVE – LOVE – LOVE her! She has taken excellent care of Ike and assures me they will be fine this year as well. I’m sure we will get things ironed out in the first few weeks but I would feel better if I didn’t have him scheduled to go to the nurses office to test 5 times during the school day! Hopefully we can drop at least one testing time depending on how things go. We met with the nurse earlier in the week to go over the pod instructions and today I dropped off his supplies and snacks! Ready or not … Here we go!

Freestyle and CVS/Caremark

So earlier this year – long before Ike had decided to do the insulin pump – our insurance decided that they were no longer going to cover the FreeStyle test strips. UGH! That is what we had been using and Ike really like them and so did I because it took so little blood to get a reading. Needless to say we changed to a meter our insurance would cover the strips for. Fast forward to now and guess what test strips the Omnipod PDM (Personal Diabetes Manager) uses … you guessed it – FreeStyle! I just shelled out $70 for 100 test strips and that is WITH the MyFreeStyle coupon. Thank you Abbott for saving me some money! My doctor’s office is working on submitting a medical exception request to CVS/Caremark to see if we can get the strips covered under insurance. Ike has just downsized to a smaller bag because he doesn’t have to carry insulin and a tester now (more about his bag in a future post) and I don’t want him to have to drag around another tester just because the strips aren’t covered by insurance. Insurance can be sooooo frustrating!

Update: see post on Test Strip Love

A podding we will go ….

Ike started on the insulin pump a week ago yesterday and we LOVE it!  Ike has always been resistant to change … he cried the whole night when we moved into our new house, he cried when my mom got a new car … change is just nit his thing. When the endo. recommended that we think about the insulin pump he immediately said no!  Well – she asked if we would attend the pump class he reluctantly said ok and then would tell me he wasn’t interested everytime I mentioned it.  When the class came he went in having no interest at all.  In addition to being a Type 1 diabetic – Ike is also Type A when it comes to his personality.  That being said he likes to maintain good control of his diabetes (did I mention that Ike is only 10) and when he heard that most people achieve better control on an insulin pump his attitude began to change.  We saw three pump demos that night and when we talked it over he said he would start pumping if  he could have the Omnipod.  After I did some research of my own I told him  would take him up on that offer and set the plan in motion.  I totally cracked up as we were pulling out of the hospital parking garage the day he got his pump when he said “It was wrong to be so resistant!”  So far we are all in love with the pump and Ike has a new air of freedom about him!