Pump party part I

The idea of throwing my daughter a pump party came to me while going through online chat rooms of parents of type 1 diabetic kids. The parents discussed the first introduction of the insulin pump to their kids through a party, as a way of making it more attractive and appealing to them. For me, at that time, it seemed like a sweet dream, the day we would finally get my daughter an insulin pump. We were waiting over 5 months to get approved for a pump. A time period that took forever to me, having to give my daughter insulin injections at least four times per day for the first time our lives, realizing we will have to do it every single day until there's a cure, and knowing there is an alternative, in the shape of an insulin pump. A small beeper-looking device that delivers the insulin 24/7 for you, all you have to do is tell it how much and when. No, it doesn't check your blood sugar and make it's own decisions (that's what the artificial pancreas project is all about) but it replaces the four shots per day with one infusion site change or port change every 2-3 days. And it allows you to live your life the way you want it and adjust your insulin accordingly, while on the shots it seemed the other way around; no sleeping late on weekends since the long term insulin had to be taken at the exact same time every morning, no skipped meals or else blood sugar goes low etc. Doing all that as an adult could work if you like to follow a schedule and enjoy routines. For kids and especially young children this could be practically impossible. Especially if they fit into the food trouble makers profile. We desperately needed our life back, our spontaneous way of living, our sleep (late on weekends) and I especially hated having to tell my Ms. Not hungry that she couldn't eat anything that had carbohydrates in it until the next meal since she had already got her insulin shot. Of course she always had the option of getting another shot but somehow for someone that doesn't like to eat anyway, it didn't seem too attractive.
So we decided we had to get her an insulin pump. Only it didn't take too long to realize it was going to be a laborious and exhausting process. We had to take various training sessions, health assessments for my daughter and undergo psychological evaluations for ourselves, as her parents and main caregivers, just to make sure we are psychologically competent for that. No one had assessed whether we were psychologically competent to raise a child with diabetes before she was diagnosed, yet they made us go through those evaluations in order to be approved to give our child the best medical treatment possible. So after going through all that, how could we not celebrate getting the pump? There was no happier than us that day when the $6,000 pump arrived in the mail, we longed for it so much that somehow we got ourselves under the impression that this will be the end for all of our problems, quite a lot to ask from a machine, even from a $6,000 machine. But we were determined to give our daughter her normal life (with diabetes) back and this small device made a huge difference.