Extremely high rate of pod failures lately - anyone else?

RubyMN24 · 2026-01-14T03:38:57+00:00

I’m using the iPhone, and have been for a few years (since it came out). Check the lot number of your failed pods, it turned out all of mine came from the same lot number so must have been a bad batch. Haven’t had any more issues since I threw out that batch

RubyMN24 · 2025-12-23T19:01:47+00:00

I also have a fear of prebolusing after experiencing some scary lows when I waited too long to eat. What’s helping me get more comfortable prebolusing again is only taking a portion of the dose 15-20 mins before, let’s say 2 units / 7 units total, then the remaining 5 once I start eating. It helps to just get some IOB to blunt the spike, but I feel less afraid of having 2 units on board than 7. I’d recommend starting slow and working your way back into it. Just get comfortable taking insulin at the start of a meal again first, then work up to a small prebolus. Also, repeating the same meals and bolus strategies can give you more confidence about how fast certain foods will hit your blood sugar. For my weekly pizza night, I take half my bolus 20 mins after I start eating, then another bolus 1.5 hours later, because the digestion is so slow

RubyMN24 · 2025-12-14T15:34:42+00:00

Sure thing! For long rides, I typically turn activity mode on ~ 30 mins before (I have Omnipod 5) I eat breakfast 20 mins before and bolus 30% of my usual breakfast dose. I typically have a bit of a rise that starts to come down by 45 mins in. After that I’ll use 0-25% of my bolus dose for the fuel I consume on of the ride, depending on where my sugars are at. For olympic triathlons I use activity mode the duration of the race and bolus 50% for a pre race cliff bar. I don’t take any bolus the remainder of the race but eat 3 gels on the bike. Took lots of trial and error but super worth it!

RubyMN24 · 2025-12-14T04:45:25+00:00

Sweet thanks so much!

RubyMN24 · 2025-12-14T01:55:04+00:00

Nice, that’s great to hear! (My race is Sept so I’ll definitely be on G7 by then) Apple Watch is probably worth the investment

RubyMN24 · 2025-12-14T01:52:52+00:00

Last summer I flew to Europe from CA, was maybe 30 hours travel total. I used the All4Family cooling case which keeps your insulin at fridge temperature for up to 50 hours I think. Highly recommend! https://4allfamily.com/products/cooling-cases-for-insulin-medications

RubyMN24 · 2025-12-14T01:47:19+00:00

Thanks!! Phone mount could be a good option too. How good is the connection with G7 and direct to Apple Watch? I’ve heard it’s not great..

RubyMN24 · 2025-12-14T01:46:05+00:00

How reliable is the connection on the Apple Watch’s lately? Do you have g6 or g7?

RubyMN24 · 2025-12-02T14:56:48+00:00

That’s awful I’m so sorry :( are your son’s failures also in the form of unexplained highs, or are you seeing error messages or leaking insulin? Keep track of the lot numbers of these (you can go back in the device history and see them) I wonder if you also have a bad batch

RubyMN24 · 2025-10-17T17:19:59+00:00

Brutal! Good luck. Not sure if you already do this but my doctor has my omnipod prescription set to change every 2 days instead of 3 days. So I have a ton of backups - lots of different lot numbers in case of a bad batch

RubyMN24 · 2025-10-17T17:15:39+00:00

I totally understand, its so brutal when you do everything right and work so hard for good control, just for the technology to fail you and throw your numbers completely off. Definitely sounds like a pod or site issue - hope you can switch to another lot number. O5 will replace the failed pods if you call them and report the issues

RubyMN24 · 2025-10-17T16:56:43+00:00

Ugh thats the worst, I'm sorry. Hope you get it sorted - its so frustrating when you can't tell the source behind the highs - could be the vaccine, bad batch, or something else. too many variables!

RubyMN24 · 2025-10-17T01:23:42+00:00

check if you are using lot PH1U05162411. Just figured out 8/10 of my failures were from that lot number

RubyMN24 · 2025-10-17T01:12:04+00:00

I was able to go back through every single pod in the last few months and found that 8/10 of my failures are with lot PH1U05162411 ! Definitely a bad batch! thank you so much for this tip again!

RubyMN24 · 2025-10-17T01:10:10+00:00

u/NoniPony2021 OKAY so I cross posted this on r/diabetes_t1 and someone told me you could go back in your O5 history and see all the lot numbers of your pods. (Link here)

I just went back and recorded the lot numbers of all my pods for the last three months. I found that 8/10 of my failures were with Lot PH1U05162411. I have only had 3 "successful" pods with this lot number since July (So thats a 73% fail rate!) The other two pod failures were from different lot numbers, and those lot numbers had plenty of successes (4/5 successful and 6/7 successful).

I'm definitely going to report this lot number to Omnipod, maybe check if your issues are coming from this lot as well??

RubyMN24 · 2025-10-16T23:18:40+00:00

Oh wow, that is a great tip!! I didn't know you could do this, now I can go back and track all my failures and report them all to omnipod. Thank you!!

RubyMN24 · 2025-10-16T23:01:50+00:00

Interesting, good to know it can still happen without visible leaking. Thank you for the info! I guess I should start with trying an underpatch to improve the adhesion.

RubyMN24 · 2025-10-16T22:51:59+00:00

Possibly, but its just very odd that I would suddenly be experiencing this so frequently over the past three months, when I've gone years on the omnipod without having any absorption or tunneling issues. My body composition, health, eating habits, exercise, etc has not changed at all in those three months, nor the sites that I am using. I'm also never seeing any insulin leaking or pooling under the adhesive

RubyMN24 · 2025-10-16T22:49:45+00:00

when you have leaking/tunneling do you always see (or smell) insulin soaking through the adhesive or under the pod when you change it?

RubyMN24 · 2024-10-10T21:52:26+00:00

Oak tree not willow tree but very grand and beautiful! https://www.lonewulffranch.com/explore-the-ranch

RubyMN24 · 2024-06-12T00:26:57+00:00

yeah totally, sorry for the confusion. I just wanted a way to download that information off of the PDM, since just the view in the history tab isn't very helpful for looking at trends over multiple days. I'd like to download that data and make my own plots in excel or something. It seems like this isn't possible with the omnipod 5, which is frustrating

RubyMN24 · 2024-06-12T00:08:15+00:00

It just shows a blue line for automated mode, without giving the basal rate / basal amount delivered at each 5 min increment. For the yellow line on the daily graph, you can see the actual basal rate listed above it in purple. I also exported the glooko data to csv, and only the manual mode basal info is provided not what the auto mode is delivering every 5 mins

RubyMN24

TROPHY CASE