Goji
Why do you assume that you’ve got to be a badly controlled diabetic to be able to have an insulin pump?
Insulin pump is a delivery method it wasn’t designed just for bad controlled diabetes it was designed as a choice of delivery for all diabetics… Yes sadly for many in the UK who are unable to self fund insulin pumping, there isn’t the choice there should be…
Funding for insulin pumps are not just funded for those with ‘bad control’ but to those that have diabetes that is difficult to control for many reasons
Some diabetics do have good control of there diabetes, but have other chronic conditions that makes maintaining this problematic or makes using a insulin pen difficult to operate..
Then you get the diabetic who has good control, but have issues and problems with injections sites, the pump is very useful in these circumstances…
There are those that can maintain good control, but to do so interferes with there quality of life and the pump returns this to them…
If I take myself as an example of why I use an insulin pump…
One of the bases of good control is having a flat basal profile to work your quick acting insulin off, which a fair few people can achieve with one or perhaps two injections of background insulin per day…
This is something I was unable to do, as I suffer DP alongside quite a fluctuating out put of glucose from my liver during the day and night… So it was impossible to flatten out my basal profile with two jabs a day. Add to this I only need a very small amount of quick acting insulin to counteract what I ate… The smallest amount that is deliverable with an insulin pen or syringe is 0.5units, this small amount can cause an hypo or hyper in my case…
So for me to maintain good control of my diabetes was very hard time consuming work, requiring up to 9 or so injections a day, as you can see this has a very big impact on ones day to day quality of life…
The insulin pump allows me to adjust my basal/background insulin hour by hour in 0.01 units giving me a flat basal profile which to work from, I have different bolus that I am able to use so that over-all my ability to maintain my good control is yes a lot easier and less time consuming than the life I lead on MDI….
So for me it’s not badly controlled diabetes that I have an insulin pump, but to make life a lot easier for me to live a near to normal life with diabetes…
Hanna
All PCT's offer some form of carb counting course to T1 diabetics