Almost 3 months on!

[ebony321]

Hey guuuys!

It just occurred to me that its almost 3 months since i was hooked up to my beloved pump!

So it means that a good few people that got theirs a few weeks before and after may be thinking the same!

It makes me laugh to think 3 months ago i was fretting over air bubbles and it took me 30 mins to change a cartridge..

Now if i come across an air bubble its second nature to whip out the pump and prime it out in no time. And it takes
Me about 3 mins to change a cartridge!

I had a hba1c of 8.4% and two months later it was 7.2% and hopefully even lower.

At work its a running joke that me and my mum are the bionic family as i have a pump and she had a de-fib/pacemaker fitted last october! Haha! And at first i was concious of people seeing my tubing from my pocket.

I used to avoid pizza like the plague because i could never get it right with MDI after many attempts. And now with the pump i can go to pizza hut and order my fave bbq chicken and it actually be worth it!

I can walk my dogs whenever i like without glugging lucozade beforehand or planning eight hours ahead, i simply pop glucose tablets in my bag and reduce my basal rate.

Maybe most important of all i have had two nights out, with no dreaded night time hypo, which were sometimes quite bad! And a good four hour boogie on the dancefloor ;0)

Also ive lost 6 pounds what i think will be down to insulin reduction. A 40% drop in basal
And almost a unit for every 10g of carb so im no longer having a 3:1 ratio :0)

Just wanted to share how much the pump actually has changed my life, and hope others will share too!

This time next year i expect to be superwoman at this rate hahaha!!

 

[SophiaW]

It was lovely to read your post ebony I found myself nodding and smiling at all those things you said. The pump has made a huge difference to our lives too.

The flexibility in controlling insulin delivery is wonderful. Like you say, eating pasta and pizza always posed a problem for us too but now it's okay, they throw a small wobble into the equation for us still but nothing nearly as bad as before the pump. I can now cook these meals without feeling guilty or dreading the highs to follow later on. I can sleep through the night without waking every single night or early morning to correct lows or highs. I must look 10 years younger with all this extra sleep! (I wish! :mrgreen: ) Yesterday Jess went on a school trip and it was the first trip ever that I didn't go along with. Until the pump and her fantastically predictable control I always went along as a parent helper. Last week Jess sang at a music festival and it was the first time ever that I was able to sit in the audience and watch without worrying about if she was too low or too high. Until a few weeks ago I would go into school every day at lunchtime to help Jess with her injection. I don't go into school anymore, between Jess and the staff it's all taken care of thanks to the ease of using a pump and the fact that the pump calculates any corrections needed.

For Jess moving onto a pump has also been wonderful for her. She has a hypo about once a week now (sometimes less) instead of every day, sometimes it was more than once a day. She has hypo awareness back now so she can catch a hypo before it gets too low. If her reading goes above 14 mmol/l the school will phone me, they've never needed to phone me since going onto the pump. Before the pump she was routinely higher than 14 at mid-morning. Jess' friends now say "cool" when they see her delivering insuin with her pump rather than "ouch, does that hurt". If Jess gets the munchies she can happily have more than one snack after school without feeling like a pin cushion. She has one prickle every 2 days rather than a minimum of 6 a day (sometimes more) like she used to have. She feels healthier, is able to concentrate better at school and has more confidence and is less self conscious about delivering insulin when out and infront of people she doesn't know.

Her HbA1c went from 8% in December before the pump to 7.1% in April done three months into pumping. Jess' total daily dose of insulin is down, from around 25-30 units per day to about 18-20 per day.

 

[iHs]

Personally, I hate to think of young kids made to use basal/bolus regime. Biphasic insulin is far better and needs far less supervision.

 

[SophiaW]

Personally, I hate to think of young kids made to use basal/bolus regime. Biphasic insulin is far better and needs far less supervision.

For us that was worse than basal/bolus and resulted in more hypos around lunchtime. It felt like constant eating or starving according to what the insulin was doing, we had to fit in around the insulin not the other way around. I'm sure there are some who the mixed insulins work well for but they don't work well for everyone. Our consultant preferred the mixed insulin but we asked for basal/bolus and it did help many of the problems we experienced on the mixed insulin (during the day), but also gave us some new problems to deal with (during the night). The pump by far has been the most workable solution for us to date.

 

[noblehead]

Sounds like great progress ebony!

Nigel

 

[iHs]

Personally, I hate to think of young kids made to use basal/bolus regime. Biphasic insulin is far better and needs far less supervision.

For us that was worse than basal/bolus and resulted in more hypos around lunchtime. It felt like constant eating or starving according to what the insulin was doing, we had to fit in around the insulin not the other way around. I'm sure there are some who the mixed insulins work well for but they don't work well for everyone. Our consultant preferred the mixed insulin but we asked for basal/bolus and it did help many of the problems we experienced on the mixed insulin (during the day), but also gave us some new problems to deal with (during the night). The pump by far has been the most workable solution for us to date.

Hi

Biphasic insulins work best by eating specific amounts of carb (according to what bg levels are) every 2-2.5hrs. The hypos that Jess had around lunchtime could probably have been prevented by eating a carb snack mid morning. It's true that if the biphasic dose is a bit too high, then people will find that they need to eat more than they would like to but once the dose is reduced down probably by 0.5u, then things get better but 'little and often' is the way to go with biphasic.

 

[iHs]

Sounds like great progress ebony!

Nigel

Yes

Well done ebony. I now have got used to my pump and how to deal with any problems it throws up and not go into panic mode anymore. A few nights ago I got the occlusion error coming up again which I knew was because of the way I had filled my cartridge but because it was so late (bedtime) I just couldn't be bothered with sorting it out and going to bed and getting up to test bg levels frequently, so I disconnected, left the pump downstairs and used some Levemir to get me through the night and re connected up to the pump the next morning.

 

[ams162]

ive just been looking through dylans results and the last few days have been perfect with none over 10 at all its joy to read his logbook now where as pre pump it was depressing lol.

well done ebony on ur sucessfull 3 months pump life is def a blessing and we are all grateful to have them

anna marie

 

[LittleSue]

Glad to hear things are going so well.

 

[josie38]

Hi,

Congrats Ebony....really glad you are coping very well with your pump

Well done on reducing your HBA1 as well!!!!!!

Keep up the good work xxxxxxxxxxxxx

josie