We're pumping!

The biggest advance in Shelby's Diabetes treatment has been the transition from shots to an insulin pump. It's a little like going from a bicycle to a motorcycle.

Since she was diagnosed almost three years ago, we've been giving Shelby insulin through shots. A while back we went from the trusty old syringe to an insulin pen, which doesn't require that we draw insulin from a vial. But Shelby still was getting up to 10 injections a day in the top of her hip, the back of her arms or the fronts of her legs. You also can give injections in the fat layer in the abdomen, but a 45-pound 5 year old doesn't have much of a fat layer there.

Though she is a trooper, getting 10 shots a day is a major pain and a major inconvenience. Imagine having to remember to carry all the stuff with you then find inconspicuous ways to give your child an injection at the mall. It also produced problems at school where not only are we dealing with staff that isn't trained on giving shots but other kids for whom syringes and needles pose a safety issue.

The state-of-the-art solution to the problem is an insulin pump. (We have some details about it in the Diabetes FAQs.) The idea of the pump is to eliminate the injections by placing a catheter under the skin and constantly deliver required insulin through a small, pager-sized computer and insulin reservoir she wears all the time.

Not only is the pump more precise, it also remembers when to give her insulin, so her baseline blood glucose levels are more even. It also has a really cool feature that helps us calculate how much to give her. All we have to put in is how many carbohyrdates she eats and her blood glucose level. The pump calculates how much she needs, even taking into account how much insulin is still active in her body. It is totally cool!

The pump also will be much easier to manage when she starts kindergarten later this month. There won't be any of those pesky needles schools don't allow on campus or the risk that some kid will decide he or she wants to shoot up WAY too much insulin to see what it feels like. The pump also has safety features to protect Shelby from mischievous fingers or accidentally giving herself too much medicine.

We've been at this now for almost a month. We are all getting very comfortable with it and her blood glucose readings are beginning to show the signs of a successful transition.