Little bursts of honeymoon

What's a honeymoon?

It's a little break from Diabetes. A type 1 can expect that at some point in their lives, their pancreas will magically kick back in for a period of time. Often it can follow an illness, ironically, much the same way that diabetes follows an illness. The "Honeymoon" as it's called, can last anywhere from a few hours to a few months, even a few years in rare cases. Imagine that, as a diabetic, you wake up one morning and your diabetes is in remission! No more shots, no more carb counting, no more 2am lows as you awake covered in sweat, disoriented looking for anything with sugar in it. Or that morning high blood sugar where you feel like you want to crawl out of your skin, the same skin that you have to plunge a syringe into to get control. A honeymoon is a little slice of happiness and confusion rolled into the same package.

Diabetes is a condition of routine. You eat what you eat because you've pre-planned what your sugar will do. You eat when you eat because that's what you've planned for with your insulin. Variations in any number of factors only leads to chaos and correction, which is why so many of the diabetics in the world are resistant to try newer, more advanced insulins, pumps, CGM's, etc. Change means uncertainty, uncertainty leads to stress, and stress leads to more uncertainty, all of which mess with your sugars and challenge your sense of control.

It would seem from all of the above that a honeymoon would be a romantic breakaway with any food you like, whenever you like, a full night's sleep (WOW), a untethered second helping of dessert maybe....hmm that does sound good. In reality however, for a caregiver of a diabetic at least, it's kind of like driving into the setting sun. It's gorgeous but you can't see a damn thing and you're not quite sure when it's going to end, just that it will. Every parent has this little flicker of hope during the honeymoon that maybe it's gone for good, but inevitably the highs come back and the glimpse of the cure fades.

Let me clarify that I don't mean to imply that honeymoons aren't great things. They are awesome for the diabetic I can assume. Come to think of it, maybe it's actually just hard on the caregiver as you're always looking on a map that you can't see. Maybe for the owner of the disease it's something you can feel?? I'd love to hear opinions on that foresure.

So, on Wednesday and Thursday we are on day 4 with a leg site on her, which only ever lasts until the 3rd day...and she's had 55 carbs of unbolused correction to handle sugar at or below 4.0mmol/L all day with a 30% cut of basal. It's stressful for us but such a nice little treat to see her system actually working. It shows that theres hope that one day we can hack into and crash the program that tells her islets to stay on the sidelines. I would LOVE to see them to come off the bench for a little longer.

8:30am 13.6mmol/L with 0.25 to correct, back to routine, thanks for the honeymoon.

b.

Animas Ping...first weekend review

Cadence's new insulin pump arrived at the office on the weekend! The much awaited Animas Ping!

My review of "the new hotness":

The Animas Ping is Johnson & Johnson's newest product for diabetes, updating a great previous model in the animas 2020. Cadence has been pumping with the 2020 since March of 2008 and we've never regretted our Animas decision for a single day. Awesome company lined with an incredible device. The Ping was a bit of surprise release as the blogs, boards, and tweets all predicted that an Animas/Dexcom integrated product would be the next release but that has lost quite a bit of attention. My intuition tells me that they can't find a way to integrate an infusion set with a CGM sensor from a cost effectiveness standpoint and also how to make them last/fail at the same rate. Likely a hurdle that can't be solved in the short term, but I digress.

The Animas Ping is a swank new sparkle pink color (or green, or silver, or blue etc), and a bit bigger, probably 1cm longer than the 2020 predecessor. Aside from a small size difference, the guts of the pump are relatively unchanged. The display and readout are similar with some additional customizable features with sounds/alerts than what was offered on the 2020. One thing that Animas neglected was to add the IOB onto the home screen. This was a much talked about miss that the bloggers/boards discussed 2 years ago regarding the 2020 was that you had 3-4 screens to go through to get to the Insulin on Board. As any pumper or parent of one in our case, the IOB is just as valuable than seeing the current basal rate, especially for temping.

The magic of the Ping however, is the wireless function of the OneTouch Ping glucose meter. You literally have a remote display of the pump in the glucose meter. You can bolus from the meter without having to fish the pump out of yours or your running like mad toddler to push buttons. She can continue to run laps around the kitchen with a crayon coloring the drywall while you sit in a chair and casually bolus for her dinner....so to speak :-) . For those operating their own pump, the big advantage is discretion in that you don't have to reach into your clothing to remove the pump, you can do everything via the meter.

EXCEPT: change your basal rate, or temp your basal! That's right, you can bolus insulin but not change basal rate unless you have the pump in hand. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

With Cadence, we probably temp her basal rate at least 1x day if not more depending on sugar and activity. To not include this option onto the Ping meter can only be described as an EPIC FAIL. So we still have to fish the pump out while holding her down to tweak the basal rate. I'd love to know the reasons behind leaving this feature out but likely it was a time to market decision. Hopefully this is fixed soon with a software update. When we ordered the Ping I didn't even research as to whether this would be included.

This massive gaff in R&D judgement aside, I can't even begin to describe how much we love the new Ping. Proof in the pudding was at Cadence's Halloween party, her pump was buried under layers of princess costume and we never had to interrupt her play sessions other than for a quick blood test. The discretion that being "wireless" with the pump provides is just so valuable. Especially now as Cadence realizes that she's a bit different from everyone else. More proof of that was at each house she trick or treated at she followed the treat with "I don't wike candy..." and walked down the steps. It was hilarious to say the least. For her social circle though, for the other kids to not see a device connected with tubing to her body 24/7 is valuable enough for her self esteem to warrant the cost of the upgrade from the 2020.

Overall, this is a tremendously good product that is long overdue. The Ping pump carries the same great information and user friendliness found in the layout and function of the 2020 pump. The Ping blood checker works as well as any other OneTouch meter and the menus are easy to navigate and the setup between the pump and meter is very intuitive.

For those on the fence regarding an upgrade, in my opinion a worthwhile one indeed. For those contemplating a pump for yourself or your child, the Animas product is as good as they come!

B.