Pumps

So today Mog's feed pump decided to die on us, thankfully not until we were in the checkout at IKEA but still leaving her without feed for the hour's journey home. Got home, unloaded the girls from the bus, and went to swap Mog's pump for Little Fish's pump which was waiting, fully charged, for just such an emergency.* And discovered that Little Fish's pump not only had a wonky battery cover, something it's had for a while, but also had a big crack across the bottom of it.**

So, I phoned the company which supply them. Spoke to the chap on duty, who agreed that Mog's pump needed to be replaced (F-02 error, for those with similar pumps), and told me I must not under any circumstances whatsoever connect or attempt to switch on Little Fish's pump with the cracked housing. Took my number and promised to get someone else to call me back.

Meanwhile, Mog still needed feeding, so I was pumping her feed through manually , trying (but failing) to keep to a slow and steady rate roughly equivalent to the 105mls per hour she's used to. An interesting task, especially when combined with our more usual evening activities - getting girls ready for bed, sorting the house, detangling the cat's neck fur...

Pump service access woman called back and suggested I tried the cracked pump, as "it probably wouldn't do anything". I suggested this probably wasn't the best plan, given the first chap's absolute veto, and she agreed to send out replacements.

The replacements have just arrived. Bizarrely, the delivery chap decided to drop them off with my neighbour and post a piece of card through our doorway telling me he'd done so. I manageed to catch him; he managed to retrieve the two cardboard boxes, and I swapped them for the two defective pumps.

He left, I closed the door, and opened the boxes properly And lifted out this pump
With what appears to be a light coating of grot on the base of the charger, although the pump itself is clean.

And this pump
Which is rather less clean.

And this one
Which is quite revoltingly filthy.

It was nice of them to send three - I'm assuming that's one for each girl plus an official back up incase we need it in the future. But I really hope they have actually sent fully working pumps, not just the first three they found in the cupboard which have been sitting waiting for repair themselves. I'm not convinced that a fully serviced pump would still be covered in milk drips though.

I've just turned them on. The first pump is set to deliver at 133mls/hour and has a dose set of 400mls/hr. The second is set to deliver 500mls at 166mls/hour; it has already delivered 32 mls of that, and is beeping low alarm at me as soon as I turn it on. And the third has a dose of 400mls to deliver at 60mls/hour. Since one of the more annoying features of the newly serviced pumps is the fact they are set to deliver 0mls at a rate of 1ml/hour, I'm thinking these are quite possibly not in fact the right pumps. You know what? I hope these aren't the right pumps - I don't want to think that a company, delivering medical equipment to extremely vulnerable children and adults, simply doesn't bother to clean them first.

I'm off to charge all three of them, and hope that one at least will do the job for us tomorrow. Pass the Dettol.
Tia

UPDATE 8AM. Having charged all three overnight, I took one off charge, hooked it up to Mog's feed, set it to run, and listened to the extremely undulcet tones of an F-04 error. I switched it off, ears ringing, and took the second pump off charge. Hooked it up to the feed, set it to run and listened to yet another F-04 error.

I've just set the third and final pump up, having spent last night scraping someone else's lactulose and epilim off the charging unit. No alarms yet.

UPDATE 2PM. I phoned the company who were apologetic and assured me there were failsafe procedures designed to prevent this ever happening. I can't help feeling they're not actually failsafe if they managed to fail, but there we go. Apparently "the courier must have picked up boxes from the wrong side of the depot." I'm not convinced that's failsafe. The third worked long enough to feed Mog until the replacement pumps turned up just now, two shiny clean pumps in shiny clean boxes, fully charged and with nice shiny paperwork. Much better.

*For I am, just occasionally, staggeringly organised like this.

**For, alas, even when I am staggeringly organised, things have a tendency to go wrong.