Hacker News Reader

Comment by stranded22 | Hacker News Reader

Before being on an insulin pump, my wife would be injecting 1-2 times a day with long acting insulin (to manage background levels) and then at least 3 times a day with food - not just meals, snacks too (and if levels running high). So realistically, 8-10 times a day would not be uncommon.

That’s after 3-5 times a day finger pricks too.

Now, she just has the pain of the libre once a fortnight and pump every few days (along with finger pricks when the libre is out).

People do not realise how all consuming T1D is - she has to be on the ball all the time. If she isn’t, then her numbers screw up and she can’t drive (or live, tbh).

This project could make a huge difference to her life - but there are always 5-10 years away

View on HN

At the moment open source artificial pancreas systems are way to go.

Have you checked androidaps or loopkit?

I had a look over the years - the libre can pretty unreliable with levels, so I am concerned about someone else’s life being in jeopardy if I made a mistake (would be different if it was my own - I’d have done it a long time ago)

She’s waiting for a closed loop system from her hospital - should be within the next few months (omnipod is due an upgrade). That said, I’ll check out androidaps and loop kit, thank you!

The Libre has been life changing for me, but in particular during sleep I do find that the levels can be very unreliable if you end up sleeping on the same side as where you have attached the sensor.

I have a Dexcom, and it's frequently 10-20% off of manual finger sticks. When paired with my pump (Tandem T-Slim) it keeps me in a good range, but still not perfect.

I‘m actually using the Libre + Omnipod Dash with a closed loop and it works pretty well (almost „flat“ blood sugar with a few spikes here and there) beside that’s, for me as tech nerd, cool to inject insuline with my phone :-).

Those are the pieces I‘m using on my iPhone:

https://nightscout.github.io/ -> to store historical data

https://github.com/Artificial-Pancreas/iAPS -> to connect the libre and pump and control the pump and make the close loop

I briefly used the libre 3, and found it very accurate (but was skeptical as the 2 and 1 could not even warn you about a low/we're passive) and durable. Currently on the Dexcom G7, waiting for support for either of these with my pump.

The libre3 and G7 seem to be leaps and bounds better than anything else I've used (G4, G5, Guardian 3).

I hope you two find something that works well!

> At the moment open source artificial pancreas systems are way to go.

He said confidently lol.

I won’t give up multiple daily injections (Lantus morning and night, Humalog with meals and for corrections) unless I absolutely have to. Diagnosed in 2014 at around 30 years old. Been 5.5-5.9 A1C for the past ~6 years. Maybe one scary low a year and able to keep up with my marathon running and live a semi-normal life.

No clue why I’d want to mess with that to try some hacker project.

T1D that was also diagnosed somewhat later in life (24), the convenience of having something like a tandem that can buy and large manage my levels, is really nice. I definitely still keep needles around for when I need to do a larger injection, anything over about 20 units in an hour and you're going to have leakage and at that point you need to replace the infusion site.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com