Pump It Up

So I have told you why I’m getting the insulin pump, and now I am going to explain what it is and how I came to get one. First off, if you are considering the pump you should know that they are hard things to come by. Unfortunately, the NHS don’t hand them out ‘willy nilly’ and there are certain requirements you need to pass.

I first heard about the pump when I was 15 and newly diagnosed. I recoiled in disgust as my diabetes nurse told me about the little machine that would be permanently attached to your body via a cannula. Back then it all sounded a bit scary, and I guess like any other teenage girl, I was a bit vain and thought only about the physical side of it. I didn’t want it to be visibly sticking out of my clothes, or for it to be discovered by some horrified boyfriend.

Fast-forward to 2010, and I am travelling across America by myself, meeting new people and experiencing a new culture. My blood sugars were a nightmare, and it was starting to restrict what I could and couldn’t do. I hated this, and so rang my Mum in desperation, pleading with her to make an appointment with my consultant as soon as I returned.

I saw my consultant a couple of months after I came back from the states, and like a true ‘divabetic’, balled my eyes out to him. I find it so difficult trying to keep myself together when I go to the hospital. I don’t know if it is psychological, but every time I step through the doors I’m not ‘Kim the 21 year-old young woman’ anymore, I’m ‘Kim the terrified teenager’.

Through speaking to me and examining my blood results over the last year or so, my consultant agreed to apply for pump funding and I was put on the waiting list. Over Christmas, I went into my local diabetes centre for Continual Glucose Monitoring(CGM). For any of you who haven’t had this done, I recommend it 100%. I was a little sceptical at first. Like the pump, it was a little machine attached to a cannula which would be clinging off my stomach for 3 days. To my relief, it didn’t hurt a bit, and after a couple of hours (walking at the pace of a 90 year-old woman because I was scared it would fall off) I forgot it was there.

Nothing could have prepared me for the results. The CGM tests your blood sugar every 3 minutes; priceless information. The results came up on a graph in the hospital, and showed that for the last 3 nights my blood sugar had gone below 2.2 between the hours of 2am and 6am, before my liver finally kicked in and produced some emergency sugar.

This is extremely dangerous; I have been unconscious during my sleep for who knows how long. It explained my high blood sugars on a morning, but the nurses were baffled as to how this has been happening.  They told my consultant, and the decision was made to make me a ‘high priority’ on the pump waiting list.

I was then called to a meeting in January to decide which pump I was going to have. There were a few choices, and all of them had their individual perks. Of course being a ‘divabetic’, I chose the pink Animas waterproof pump. I enjoy swimming, so thought it would be handy to have something that I could just leave on.

At the meeting, I was told exactly what the pump is, and how it works. If you want a technical explanation, then there are some great websites which can give you just that. I’m not a medic professional though, and I needed my explanation to be slow, repeated a few times and in plain old English.

A cannula. Not so scary is it? Photo from here

The pump machine is about the size of a pager, and filled with only one type of insulin – the fast-acting kind. The insulin reservoir is connected through a long piece of tubing, attached to your fatty bits via a cannula. So when you come to eating, and you need some insulin, you simply type into your pump how much you need and it is slowly released into your body through the tubes. This of course means you no longer need to inject yourself at meal times, or before bed. You don’t need any long acting insulin, because the pump delivers short-acting into your body slowly throughout the day. Of course every diabetic is different, so you will need to work out how much you need, and at what times.

An insulin pump. Photo from here

Sounds good doesn’t it? But before you get your hopes up, you must check with your GP to see if you qualify for a pump. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE...ironic huh?!) requires:

1)      You have ‘disabling hypoglycemia’, which basically means you are experiencing a lot of hypos at random times, which has a fundamental impact on your quality of life OR/AND

2)      Your HA1bc is over 8.5% despite efforts to carefully manage your diabetes using multiple injections

If you have a spare £4,000 a year lying around, you can fund the cost of an insulin pump yourself and receive it pretty much ASAP. If this applies to you, visit INPUT for more information and feel free to take me shopping one day. (I joke...kind of!)

Deciding on whether to apply for the pump is a big decision, and for me it was easily made after a long and frustrating battle trying to control my blood sugars. Remember to do your research, ask your GP for advice and double check you can qualify for funding.

Stay tuned for more blogs weighing up the pros and cons of insulin pump therapy, the different pumps on the market at the moment and my pre-pump nerves as d-day looms (March 3rd, don’t forget!)