Fulfilment of a Childhood Dream

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to know what it would be like to be a robot. Now, I can replace part of my body with electronics.

The Issues.

As you may recall, I am a type 1 diabetic, and due to my health insurance covering an insulin pump, I thought I would look at how these work out for my life.

I have spent the last 7 months struggling with managing my diabetes, I was finding that my ADHD was interfering with all the moving parts in proper management. I would take BGLs, eat and then forget the insulin. I would take the BGLs and insulin and then forget to eat.)

About a month ago, I had the pre-pump class, where you are taught the basics about how a pump works. Once you understand how to work out how many carbohydrates you will eat, do a food diary showing how these will all fit together. If you were found to be suitable for a pump, then the process starts to get one.

Later that week, I got the call that I was hoping for; not only had I been successful, but I was the only person who could recall all the food types that had carbohydrates, and this class had people in it who were in their 60s diagnosed as children.

The Solution.

I decided on a Tandem T-Slim X2, and luckily, the month before, they had been permitted to be re-released for sale by the TGA. This unit can be paired with Dexcom G6 Constant Glucose Monitoring, helping give me coverage from any hypos by switching insulin delivery off for up to 2 hours. The other benefit is that I will not have to prick my fingers as often, which is good as they now look like Swiss cheese.

Add all this together, and I have an all-in-one solution to manage my diabetes with fewer moving parts.

The Price.

There is a downside to this. Cost. Whilst the pump itself was “free”, its consumables were not. The CGM is $330 per month on a subscription for 12 months, a 36 per cent saving on purchasing the items monthly. The consumables for the pump will work out to be about $50 per month.

It has been just shy of a week, and only time will tell if I can manage to sustain the cost of the CGM component, but currently, the reduction in alarms on my phone to remind me to do things around managing my Diabetes is a relief. Now I have the alarms during the day to remind me to eat 🥴

I will allow this some time to bed in and will come and provide an updated post about how I am travelling in about a month.