How Does Life Look?

I had a few people asking me questions as of late about Alison's life on the pump and I realized that unless you live with it every day, you may not grasp the concept of the overall idea of the pump and what it entails.

The pump is a device that is attached to Alison 24 hours a day, without interruption, via what is like a small catheter, under her skin that delivers mini doses of insulin to her on a continuous basis (hourly).  We program the pump and tell it how much insulin to give her based on trial and error and math that we and her medical team came up with.  This hourly rate, which changes throughout the day, covers Ali's insulin needs for times of "fasting".  It is a basal rate

Before Alison eats we must test her Blood Glucose Levels by pricking her finger with a lancet and putting a drop of blood in a Blood Glucose Meter.  The meter gives us a reading.  We then will use the amount of carbohydrates in the food she is about to eat, do some fractions, figure out how much insulin her body needs to cover off the food, then consider her whether or not her blood sugar is high or low and determine how much insulin to give her prior to her consuming the meal of snack.  This amount of insulin is called a bolus.

As you can guess, meals and snack are not quite as grab and go in our house as they might be with a non-diabetic pre-preschooler...but we're used to it and we manage quite well!

here's a pictorial of the actual process of putting Alison's pump set into her skin (we change this every three days and plan on adding a video soon).

This is what the piece of plastic that stays under Ali's skin looks like.  There is a needle in it, that pokes through the skin during the insertion process

So first we put Emla numbing cream on the site for ten minutes to take some of the sting out of the needle.

This is what the needle looks like

We disinfect the site with some alcohol (yes, it is cold)

Alison has an allergic reaction to the adhesive on the site of her insertion set, so we have to put Tegaderm (a clear bandage used in hospitals) down on her skin as a barrier between the set and her body.

We uncoil the cannula (the tubing that the insulin will travel from the pump into Alison's body through)

We cock the needle by pulling back the white trigger mechanism

We make sure the cannula is in the right position

Then we inject the needle, Ali gets a pinch

We remove the cover

We put another sheet of Tegaderm on top of the site.  Alison has very little body fat (she's pushing her tummy out for the insertion process) and the site sometimes will come out without being taped in place.

Once we take the paper off the sides, Alison will walk around like this for three days, until we change her site again.  We  rotate sides, so the next time it will be on her left side to avoid creating too much scar tissue in one spot.