Diabetes Update: Insulin Pump

September 12, 2022

Well, it took a couple “Yes, I do” and “No, I don’t” cycles, but Ellie decided that she wanted to have an insulin pump to manage her diabetes differently.  About 8 months ago, we inquired about a Omnipod as her choice of pumps.  This pump has all the insulin in the pump, looks similar to her Dexcom, and has no tubing.  But then, she decided that she wasn’t really interested in that for two reasons: 1) you had to change it every 3 days and that felt overwhelming, and 2) it had an automatic injector to attach it each time; the surprise that came with that was not appealing. 

So, we backed off.

Then, she started thinking about getting a Tandem T-Slim with Control IQ.  This pump is housed in a unit that looks kind of like a pager with tubing connecting it to the infusion site.  My cousins have this style of pump.  When they came to visit at the end of July, Ellie was able to watch Kristin change the pump.  She was all in after that.  We filled out paperwork, called the Tandem rep, and started the process.  It happened much quicker than we expected!  (For once, insurance was a smooth and speedy process.) 

On fair day, September 12, 2022, we took our supplies that had been shipped and headed up to Akron Children’s in Akron for our training session.  We had prepped for the day by watching the videos that they suggested so that the terms and info was at least a little familiar.  The training was about 2 hours.  It was a lot.

Then, Ellie had to put on the infusion set.  She picked the Tru-Steel infusion set (also because there are no auto-injectors).  This set is a small steel needle that she just inserts into herself.  The tubing then runs from there to her pump which she fills with insulin every two days. 

The first two nights were not fun – low lows at night multiple times!  It was exhausting and I hated the experience.  However, the daytime was amazing.  Walking around the fair and eating foods just required punching in some numbers.  There was no finding a good space for pulling out the insulin pen, attaching the needle, doing the math, logging it in, etc.  It was simple and speedy. 

We still have to know the carbs, but the calculations are done on the pump.  With the Control-IQ feature, the pump is supposed to help make decisions about how much insulin you might need.  if you have insulin on board that your body hasn’t yet used, it tells you how much.  If it sees you are going high, it starts giving you more insulin.  If it sees you are going low, it slows or stops your insulin.  We are still in an adjustment period where the doctors are tweaking dosages to help her be more consistent.  But we watched her A1C fall from 8.2 to 6.7 in the first few weeks of using it.  Pretty cool. 

It is still a lot to change it every two days.  The first few changes we used our manual and went step-by-step.  It would take about 30-45 minutes.  Now, we are all pretty confident about the steps, and typically it takes about 15 minutes.  There are still glitches sometimes.  And we still need to work on changing the infusion site to different locations.  Probably the roughest three days are when we have a pump change one day followed by a Dexcom change the next and another pump change the third. 

But Ellie is a trooper.  She has a lot of confidence in her skills to manage her diabetes, but she still is good about asking us questions and trying to figure things out.  She has a good attitude (most of the time) dealing with all the added responsibility and equipment she has to have. 

While life would still be easier without diabetes, she has done a tremendous job accepting this is who she is and not being ashamed of any of it.  It is absolutely amazing.  And we couldn’t be prouder of her.