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"To be strong in the end, you must fight from the beginning."

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Intro to Pumping Class on Thursday + Choosing My Pump

        Yes my little sugar free niblets, I am officially on the road to becoming a pumper of insulin. On Thursday I am scheduled in an introduction to pumping class at the children's hospital in my area. It's pretty ridiculous how excited I am. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I did a complete turnaround in my stance on insulin pumps. I hated the idea of being connected to something. I quickly got over that though when I saw all the benefits (oh yeah and all the cool kick butt features some of them have). So below I decided to include the pros and cons of the insulin pumps available in Canada right now that I considered and why I'm choosing the one I am.

OMNIPOD

Pros:
-No tubing
-Sophisticated PDM (personal diabetes manager)
-Don't have to see needle
-Cheaper than many other pumps

Cons:
-Wasted insulin if the "pod" fails
-Inability to disconnect
-Stranded if the PDM is lost
-Bulky under tight clothing/ no ability to relocate pump once attached


MEDTRONIC VEO

Pros:
-Integrated CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring)
-Customizable Skins
-Carelink

Cons:
-Not waterproof
-Low Resolution Screen


ANIMAS PING

Pros:
-Waterproof
-Meter-Remote (ability to deliver insulin using glucose meter without needing to remove pump from wherever it is stashed)
-Colour Screen (in Canada there is a high resolution colour screen on both the pump and meter remote)
-Carb database (store foods along with their carb values in the meter. Eliminates guesswork when calculating carbs)
-Customizable alert songs (that's just cool)
-Company will lend you a spare pump if you go on vacation in case something happens to yours

Cons:
-No CGM
-Limited options for skins


So by what I've written you can probably hazard a guess as to which one I've decided on. Animas Ping baby! For a while it was a little bit of a toss up between the Veo and the Ping (Sorry Omnipod, but I knew you weren't going to work for me after about five minutes). I really like the idea of continuous glucose monitoring especially since I will be at university next year. I would love to be able to catch any possible nighttime lows and know my BG and any given time. But in the end, I could just see myself using more of the features on the Ping (e.x I'm a lifeguard/ swimming instructor. The waterproof feature was kind of a no brainer.) I'm still hoping and crossing my fingers too that the stand alone cgm system Dexcom will be made available in Canada soon. Happy pumping everyone!!!


I'm a Slacker, Hate Me if You Will.../ Why I Blog?

So I have been seriously slacking on my blog writing.........It's been months. This is why keeping a diary never worked out for me as a little girl. I always put it off and then never got around to it. I also didn't really have any secrets I needed a diary for haha. I was always sort of an open book.

Back on topic though, I have made it my goal to write AT MINIMUM one blog post a week. Call it my New Years resolution if you will (one of my many).

Blog writing for me is highly beneficial. As soon as I was diagnosed back in April, I found myself spending ridiculous amounts of time researching diabetes, diabetes gadgets, pumps, cgm....see the trend? <-------(my Verio IQ meter does..........yeah haha lame joke). I found myself wishing that that I could find an all in one hub of answers for the questions I had. And whilst I don't claim to have all the answers, or even a handful of them, I hope my blog can help other T1D's out there. I love posting my stories and cool diabetes findings and networking with other pwd. That my dear pancreatically inept friends, is why I blog.