What’s changed?

Not a right lot by the looks of things. We might have disappeared for two years but on our return our blog posts still offer no useful purpose in society and the comments are a happy mix of abuse and general pedantry. So, aside from having a baby which changed just about everything, has anything actually changed for me in the two years we’ve been away?

Alison’s perfectly toned stomach is one thing that hasn’t changed at all. Honest.

I got a new pump (well 3 actually). The Veo  developed a button problem and wouldn’t stop alarming at 3am. Conveniently we were on holiday in Jersey. I called the Medtronic 24/7 helpline and talked it through with a man in the US. Diagnosis was terminal. The UK team dispatched a new pump that day and it was delivered to the hotel the following day. Impressive.

Even more impressive was that I actually had in-date long acting insulin with me. Although when I found out I’d have a new pump within 36 hours I decided not to use it. By the time it got into my system it’d have been time to start thinking about how to come off it again ready for the new pump. I just injected my missed basal every 2-3 hours, plus any bolus I needed and it worked fine.

I got an upgrade in June 2016 to the new Medtronic 640G. I like it a lot. The SmartGuard technology that suspends insulin if it predicts a low and restarts it once it spots you starting to rise is very impressive. I would write a review but Mike at everdayupsanddowns has done some good ones so I don’t need to bother (although I still struggle to read anything Mike writes about pumps without a smirk on my face, as I remember quite how certain he was that they really, without a doubt, were definitely not for him. And now I’m linking to his reviews on them rather than writing my own!).

That pump lasted until a couple of weeks ago when I fell off my own backdoor step. I landed on my foot, elbow and pump. My foot and elbow fractured. My pump didn’t even blip. Medtronic replaced it because the screen was so scratched from the collision with the concrete you could barely read the numbers which are handy to see sometimes.

I stepped back into diabetes. Having given up all diabetes related stuff other than my non-negotiable role as my own pancreas, I somehow got sucked back in last year. Talking to people I realised not everyone was getting the same great care in pregnancy that I got. So when I saw an advert looking for lay people to join the National Pregnancy in Diabetes audit, after a lot of umming and ahhing I eventually applied.

At times I can be found banging my head on the desk at the devastating realisation that I’m involved again in trying to solve the same problems we’ve been failing to solve for at least my living memory. And then every now and again I get to share a point of view from the patients perspective that changes how healthcare professionals approach things. And that’s the bit that keeps me going when I’m questioning why on earth I keep going back for more.

Things that haven’t changed. Despite trying to convince Tim he’s the only one left in the world with diabetes and the rest of us have been cured, I must confess, I am still pancreatically challenged. And the other ;