Twenty.
Twenty. Half of forty. Half of my life.
Over the past few weeks I’ve received multiple notifications that my pump warranty expires later this summer indicating it is time consider the next part of my diabetes device journey…I couldn’t help but think and reflect on my past.
Twenty. Twenty years since I started on my first insulin pump. It was May, 2002.
Growing up with T1D I was never exposed to the option of an insulin pump. Not until I started attending diabetes camp and after years into my diagnosis. The system looked bulky to me, and like a very obvious medical device highlighting the fact that the person “looked sick.” I danced competitively and swam on my high school swim team so the thought of having a small pager sized thing attached to me never crossed my mind. (Omnipod was not yet readily available).
Year after year more young adult staff and kids started showing up at camp with this special new gadget that still to me looked cumbersome, requiring so many pieces, accessories, and complicated calculations. I overheard the words basal and bolus time and time again and started to become more curious.
How do they shower with it? Can you ever take it off? Where do you put it when you pee? Do you change the tubing every 3 days? All of these questions I began to ask over the course of the 14 days, inquiring about which buttons do what, learning the intricacies of the machine.
Fast forward to 2001 and I was entering my freshman year of college. (GO ‘CUSE). The inconsistent schedule, coupled with the demanding academic and social lifestyle I quickly shifted towards was the opposite of what I had grown accustomed to with the very routine camp life. Several weeks into my fall semester I quickly realized my Lantus and lack of willing to bust out a syringe and vial in a giant lecture hall was not going to work; with repeated meter readings of HI on on the meter and long term blurry vision, I immediately knew I was ready to talk to my endo team about a pump.
Twenty. Twenty years I have been attached to a device. Sure, I have taken tiny breaks here and there for different events or reasons, but I have been physically connected to a tube infusing the medicine that keeps me alive for 20 years. 90% of the time I don’t think about the fact that wear a visible medical device; I feel naked without it. I Feel around to make sure its there, stashed in a pocket, tucked into my bra; it is one of those things if you forget it half way up your driveway you run back inside to get. I am lost without it.
I don’t know if it is because lately my daughter's friends start to ask “what’s that thing on your arm, or “what is that tube for” or that I am relating a visible medical device in my head to that of what I see with friends newborns needing extra care attached to wires and stickers on their body.
Am I sick? AND, without insulin continuously infusing, or given through injections, I will be.
Whether or not I continue on with the system I am using today or invest in a completely new plan I will keep rocking my pump and wearing it on my sleeve, for the world to see.
How do you think about the medical device being a part of your identity? Do you?
How did you decide which pump was right for you?
I can’t wait to hear what you think….
~Anna
