A slightly scary looking toddler, yesterday
Get a toddler. They don’t have to be yours, you could borrow one for a while as long as you get the owners permission. They’ll revolutionise your daily pancreatic duties:
- No more missed blood tests. Your toddler will wake you everyday with the cheery refrain “its morning time. Do your blood test”.
- No excuses. You might think because you tested an hour ago to check if you were high that’s enough. But no, dia-toddler knows no flexibility, that meter will remain under your nose until you perform.
- No more solo blood test struggles. I don’t know about you but I’ve always found blood testing a lonely time. So many times I’ve fantasised about having my own personal finger pricker loader and finger squeezer. And now I do. Living the dream.
- There are some limitations. Repetition is the best form of training for toddlers. Due to the annual nature of lancet changes, their lack of exposure in this area means they’ll probably have left home before they’re any use.
- Biology lessons optional. You can choose to explain why we all have blood etc or you can give up and let the toddler continue to believe that the blood comes out of the finger pricker and onto your finger. I’ve tried both and there’s no way she’s falling for my nonsense about blood being in fingers.
- Know exactly where you stand in life. The ability of Medtronic’s 640G pump to keep me alive was somewhat overshadowed by the toddler’s devastation on discovering she couldn’t use it to listen to music or look at photos of herself.
- Get that extra bit of jeopardy we all need. You’ve not known fear until you’ve sat with a toddler poised to press the button to fire a spring loaded needle into your back as she “helps” daddy insert a sensor.
- Pump alarms too quiet? You’ll never miss one again now that you have the toddler audio boost feature. “Pump mummy pump” can be shouted at any volume from loud upwards regardless of the appropriateness of the situation. Don’t worry, even in those quiet moments like the silent queue in the Drs you, and those in a 5 mile radius, wont be allowed to miss an alarm.
I don’t know how I ever managed diabetes without one.
Ive missed you elequent annecdotes on being a diabo!
Steve
Ahh thank you, and my ego has missed being massaged so now we’re all happy again
Alison – are you *ever* going to change your byline photo? That picture must be about a decade old now…
A mere 7 years actually. And probably not until I look younger and thinner than I do there!
Thank you for bringing my ego back under control.
No probs co-writer! All part of the service.
Oddly I never hear my pump or meter alarm either, but everyone else does every time and has to tell me about it, I think I tune out,
Still I won’t hear my meter tonight, I’ve left it at work, still I’ve got a spare…… It just does not talk to my pump, which is a shame, more manual thumberling around trying to find where the pumps gone under the cloths….. (it’s a accucheck combo, I’ve had it just over a year)