Ad hoc

February 18th 2002 we turned up at the County hospital in Glostrup, Copenhagen. We had arranged to have some days off both of us, and our son Tobias had a short vacation at his grand parents’. Emilie was to be in hospital for a couple of days in order to be in close contact with the diabetes nurses and endocrinologist. Moreover, a nurse would measure Emilie’s blood glucose during the night. Disetronic showed up with an experienced pump nurse to give some advice help for the first couple of hours and ‘our’ endocrinologist was very dedicated to ensuring our success.

Emilie was fasting and had not taken any insulin in the morning so we were in a bit of a hurry to ‘get connected’. The nurse helped us to get it right and told us about her own experiences with different types of needles.

The needle was something that would be very present during the first couple of days. The Tender needle was much better for Emilie than the Rapid, but Emilie had extreme focus on the needle. She talked about it most of the time and told us whenever she could feel it a little bit when bending over or lying on her stomach. We had asked her to tell us, because we could not feel the needle in her stomach so she had to tell us how it felt. And so she did …
After years and years of preparations, talk and trying to persuade the health system, Emilie was now wearing a ‘live’ insulin pump.

Our job now was to adapt to a new way of thinking about carbohydrates. Of course, we were used to thinking about what Emilie was eating. But that was mostly to ensure, that she was eating around the same amount as what she used to eat at a particular time of day. And, of course, that she did not eat something with sugar in it and in general was eating healthy foods. At some occasions, we had tried to calculate the carbohydrate content of a particular meal or food item and tried to give a dose of rapid acting insulin to cover it – but not with great success.

Now, everything was turned up side down. At each meal, we could think in an entirely new way: “Well, Emilie, what do you want to eat?” And then consider the carbohydrate content and the amount of insulin needed to cover it.

This is the eighth post in a series - read the first post here.

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