Apologies to anyone who was waiting for photos and details of my new insulin pump yesterday…I searched for the camera for a long time to no avail. After looking in all kinds of random places Ben and I suspect that it may have been left at Owen and Natasha’s wedding in Edinburgh several weekends ago. Which is very sad as it was a particularly good camera. Anyway by the time I stopped hunting for the camera I was tired and mid hypo so had some lucozade and went to bed.
The new pump is great. The pump itself looks the same as the old one except that it is black so looks a lot smarter. It comes with a very swish blood tester/remote control which is the best diabetic gadget I have ever owned. Not only can I use it to test my bloodsugars and control my insulin pump but it has lots of extra features.
With it I can:
See pretty graphs, tables and pie charts of my blood sugar readings, insulin intake and carbohydrate intake. Including averages, daily trends and the percentages that I am hitting my targets.
Get bolus advice – this means that it automatically tells me how much insulin I should take depending on what my blood sugar is, how much carbohydrate I have eaten and how much insulin I already have in my system from previous boluses. In order to get it to do this I had to set it up with some numbers first. This includes my insulin sensitivity factor, my insulin:carb ratio and insulin duration. Now when I eat instead of doing complicated maths in my head all I need to do is calculate how much carbohydrate I’m having, enter it into the meter and the rest is worked out for me.
Set reminders of when to change my infusion set, reminders to test at specific times of day eg 2hrs after eating, reminders to recheck my bloodsugar an hour after giving myself a bolus to correct a high bloodsugar. If I really wanted to I could even set it to remind me of diabetes clinic apointments and lab test appointments!
It’s probably quite sad really that I get excited over technology designed to improve my diabetes control, but I don’t care if I sound ever so slightly geekish. I’m a diabetic geek and proud of it.
I mentioned the other day that I had been approached to do an interview about my experiences with Diabulimia. Well I did the interview over the phone and I’ve been sent the Press Release to check whether I agree with what has been written. I’ve checked it over and there are a few minor alterations that I would like to be made, but other than that I think it is a really good article. The plan now is for it to be sent to local and national media, including radio and TV and possibly to a national woman’s magazine. The article contains a short version of my story and the author is hoping that it will encourage journalists to contact her in order to obtain further interviews with me. Exciting stuff really! I sent a few photos of me, spent ages trawling through my photos to try and find some that I looked half decent in, especially if they are going to appear in national press! I guess now I have to wait and see whether anyone wants to publish the article that has been written. Maybe I’ll get a few moments of fame!
Dana Said:
on 26/06/2009 at 6:07 pm
Question about your new pump… did they eliminate the 4 year timer in the new model??? or is that still a “feature”? Glad you like it. I am currently look at new ones… they are bring the new AccuChek one to Canada in January, but I don’t like the timer feature.
Clare Said:
on 04/07/2009 at 9:13 pm
Heya Dana
I didn’t know there was a 4yr timer on the old one, I haven’t read anything about the new one having a 4 yr timer and my pump rep didn’t say anything about it either. Sorry I can’t be of more help on that one!