The Background

Greetings!

Welcome to my blog. I am K. I have been living in this mystery of diabetes and trying to discover what to do with it since the end of 1995. I was in high school, in 10th grade to be exact when this all started.
Like many high school kids I was more interested in spending time with friends, staying up late and just having fun. That on top of school and running left little time for intelligence gathering on this thing that had just sprung up from the depths.

Years passed and somehow my family and I became a bit more understanding of what was needed, or so we thought. We really didn't know what tools were out there and weren't really looking. Then one day we found a tool that would become my best friend, the Insulin Pump. This tool felt like the smartest device ever. It helped me reduce my insulin from 150 units per day down to 30 or 40, depending on the timing. We thought this tool will help us solve the mystery of diabetes and wacky blood sugar readings for good. Wow, were we wrong. It makes a world of difference, but definitely not the end of the story.

I started with a Minimed 508 and wore that until it broke on my birthday. Of all days, my birthday. Minimed was not as good back then as they are now and the hassle resulted in me switching to Deltec. The pump was good, mainly because of the infusion sets that were much more comfortable and at the time their customer service was much better than Minimed's. Then I moved to a new city with new doctors and they wanted me on Minimed again so they could get more information. As soon as it was approved I was back on Minimed, on a Paradigm 722 this time. Their customer service was vastly improved and I have not had any issues with them there.

That is when we found another clue - the CGM or continuous glucose monitor. The doctor said, this will give us a good picture of what happens with your readings all day long, no matter what you are doing. Wow! Could this be the solution to all the ups and downs and get me to not have to worry? Like any good detective we started the research. The initial findings looked good, so we decided to test the theory. It hurt like crazy, but maybe pain was part of the price you have to pay to get the answers.

We started getting some information, but not enough insight for me to continue down this path. Time to look for other options.

Just then a new twist to the story. I found out I was pregnant! While we were delighted it also brought fear. How do we keep this new little life safe when we don't have the case solved? Thankfully all my searching for answers had kept my readings in fairly good control and my A1cs were in a very healthy range for pregnancy. Now we just have to deal with the pregnancy day by day.

Thanks to God, my wonderful family and amazing doctors the pregnan
cy was very smooth. Little k shall we call her arrived essentially on time (the doctors wanted me to deliver around 38 weeks), she was 7lbs 7oz, 21 inches long and scored very well on her assessments. We thought all would go back to how it worked before the pregnancy, not so.

Enter the twist of hormone changes (different than before), breast feeding and adjusting to taking care of someone else. This someone else depends on you for everything and doesn't understand mommy doesn't feel good or highs or lows. After adjusting mentally and emotionally to these wonderful changes it was time to see if we could get some more clues in the diabetes regulation mystery. Re-enter the CGM. Again, pain, but less than last time. The readings were more closely aligned, but the variance on top of the pain still wasn't making this path a good one. Exit the CGM.

This brings us basically to our current situation. No CGM, but it is still in warranty for a few more days and wearing the Paradigm 722.