Ad hoc

My intention with this series of posts on pump therapy as we have experienced it in our family, has been to give as realistic an impression of the therapy as possible and to share the experiences we have made ‘on the floor’. Experiences that others, hopefully, can benefit from - or share their disagreement with …

I might have put a lot of emphasis on problems and challenges, that other pump users may find diminutive, but in my opinion these issues are important to be aware of, when considering pump therapy.

Besides, if you are going to write a little more than a page about life with an insulin pump you have to go into details about challenges and problems as well as benefits.

Because all of the benefits and positive effects of pump therapy can be put in few words:

It is a life as close to normal as is possible for a person with type 1 diabetes today. And in our opinion, pump therapy should be an option to every diabetic who has the motivation and interest – of course, an endocrinologist also has to assess that the patient will benefit from improved control, but other parameters than HbA1c should go into consideration, when this medical assessment is made.

To summarize:

• Emilie avoids several injections each day. Injections that were painful and led to swollen read marks on her legs and hips. You do not have to do much calculation to figure out, that a diabetic who has four injections a day will avoid 1,250 injections each year when changing to pump therapy. A child, who starts using the pump as a ten year old and gets 80 years old will be saved from 87,500 injections during those years. And that is the net number …

• On the vast majority of days where everything works out well, Emilie and we have an extensive freedom that we were not even close to with pen therapy. Emilie is free to eat as she wants to – considering, of course, general advice concerning healthy eating. And equally important: Free not to eat if she does not feel hungry!

• The whole family is normally free to sleep the whole night without we as parents having to stagger through the house to measure blood glucose, wake up a sleeping child and feeding her almost against her will.

• The whole family is free to eat at times that fits into our daily schedule. And at times when we feel hungry.

• Emilie is free to participate in spare time activities as well as schoolwork on equal terms with her friends and classmates. Without paying disproportionate attention to her diabetes.

• Emilie is free to sleep late during weekends without risking severe lows because of insulin injected perhaps 12 hours earlier.

• And all of these benefits are possible while at the same time achieving a better control of Emilie’s blood glucose. On a day-to-day basis as well as her HbA1c.

Pump therapy is not perfect and without problems. And as mentioned in the first post of this series it is not a cure. But – comparing the daily life of this family for the last four years with the years before the pump – we would never go back.

This is the fifteenth and last post in a series that, if read as a whole, form a rewrite of a presentation my wife and I have made at different pump and diabetes occations over the years. You can read the first post here.