Anonymous - My first two weeks with Loop Auto bolus

I have been a type 1 diabetic for over 24 years, and all my life I had dreamed of not having to think about insulin and blood sugars. The Loop Auto bolus was the answer; I have been looping for two weeks now and have not looked back. This blog post isn’t meant to sell anything to you, but simply show you what my own experience with the Loop has been so far.

Originally, I had been using an Omnipod insulin pump and Dexcom G6 continuous glucose monitor (CGM) separately. What I understand the Loop to do is link my pump and CGM together so that the human element (me!) is removed. In simpler terms, my pump and CGM can communicate with each other to determine when and how much insulin to release into my body. Essentially, the Loop behaves like an external pancreas!

The first few days on the Loop required lots of adjustment. My initial Loop settings were adjusted to be more conservative (to avoid lows); for example, my Omnipod insulin:carb ratio was 1:8, whereas my Loop was set to 1:10. I very quickly found my blood sugars to be much higher on the first day, so I reverted back to my original Omnipod settings. In theory, the Loop was supposed to detect the rise in my blood sugars during meals and automatically release insulin as needed. However, it didn’t seem like that was happening and I found myself having to manually bolus via the app. This was hugely disappointing, as I was looking forward to that no-human-intervention aspect of the Loop. At Dr. Elliott’s suggestion, I lowered my insulin sensitivity factors (ISFs), bringing it down 0.2 mmol/L (eg. from 3.3 mmol/L to 3.1 mmol/L). This seemed to do the trick and I was no longer needing to manually bolus for meals! However, this didn’t last for long. My loop was working great for the first couple days, but I was finding myself with a lot of lows. I readjusted a few more settings (ISFs, correction factors, basal rates) and my blood sugars are getting back in line, but it will likely be a work-in-progress for a while. With all that said, even now, the freedom of just eating without having to think about bolusing has been amazing beyond words (and can I really complain when I have to eat that candy to boost my blood sugar).

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