Monday, April 28, 2008

insulin pumps

I thought I'd write about them today. My hubby does not have one and REFUSES to get one. Why?

They require "work".

They are not 100% maintenance free.

It is an outward sign of anotherwise unseen disease.

It is an admission that you have this disease, so you really can no longer deny it.

Now remember, this is a man who will tell you that diabetes is a disease of the pancreas AND NOTHING ELSE!!!

And although his kidney function is down to 25%....he will repeat over an over that this is NOT diabetes because diabetes only impacts the pancreas.

He truly is brilliant at finding ways to deny there is anything wrong with him at all. And I do have to giggle....ok, admit it...what guy ever admits his own faults? And I'm sure my hubby sees his low functioning kidneys as a "fault".

And once again, I cannot make life choices for him. He has to do them himself. He has heard the advice of his doctors. He refuses to accept what they tell him is best for him. So no pump for now for all the reasons above. I'm living with a man who has made a choice to die, to live the remaining time he has the way he wants, gobbling down one bag of potato chips and chasing that with a bag of chocolate!

How sad is that?
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3 comments:

Christine said...

Insulin pumps require a LOT of work. Way more than the 2-3 shots a day he's doing now.

You have to figure out your settings. There's basal and bolus settings. For basal, you have to figure out how many units an hour you need. To do this, it's trial and error. You pick a rate, then test it. Testing involves not eating and testing your blood sugar every 30-60 minutes to see if it stays stable.

Then there's bolus insulin. You need to figure out how many grams of carbohydrate a unit of insulin covers and how much one unit brings your blood sugar down. This also involves a fair bit of trial and error.

Then on a daily basis you can plan on testing your blood sugar at least 6-8 times a day- often more. Every time you eat you need to know how many grams of carbohydrate you're eating and enter that, plus your blood sugar, into the pump.

Then there's temp rates, extended and dual wave boluses, and alarms to figure out how you want programmed as well.

You can have great success on a pump, but it's costly, time consuming, and thought consuming. It's really something for a motivated person, which I can tell your husband is not.

4/28/2008 10:52 AM
Christine said...

Also wanted to add-

I'm sorry that you feel your husband has given up. That's very difficult. I'm sorry his diabetes has impacted you so much.

(((hugs)))

4/28/2008 10:54 AM
Anonymous said...

I am sorry you have to deal with this, it must be so frustrating to live with someone who refuses to take responsibility. Not to be harsh, but it seems like for your husband an insulin pump may be too little too late, especially with the damage that's already been done.
As helpful as insulin pumps are, they will only help improve control if the user is willing to step up their monitoring - if your husband isn't willing to test 8x/day on a pump, his control will likely be worse than it would be on shots.

4/28/2008 11:47 AM

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