This piece was written back in 2013 about a different insulin pump, but the song remains the same: pumping insulin alleviates some of my diabetes mental load and makes living with this disease a little mellower. I mean, I could “wash the dishes by hand,” but it’s so much nicer to play with my kids or go for a walk while the dishwasher runs.
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Our dishwasher broke a week or two ago. It was pretty old (came with the house) and at that point where repair out-priced replacement, so my husband and I decided to head to a local appliance store to pick out a new dishwasher.
Quick and painless (except in the wallet department), we walked out thirty minutes later with the delivery and installation of our new dishwasher scheduled. And a week later, the old dishwasher was brought out to pasture (I like to think that they build robots out of old appliances), with the new one installed and whirring and washing, as advertised.
“Dude, that was too easy. Now I want to replace all of the appliances in this house that aren’t working 100% perfectly,” I said to Chris as we admired our new household addition.
Later that night, as I changed out my infusion set and primed my pump with insulin to last me another three days, I thought about my own replacement parts. On my hip was an appliance, for lack of a better word, that stood in as a replacement for my crapped out beta cells. The insulin-producing cells of my pancreas have been all-but dormant for the last twenty-seven years, forcing me to make synthetic insulin as part of my life, in order to sustain my life. For years, I took injections, which was the diabetes-equivalent of hand washing all my dishes.
Pumping insulin, for me, is the dishwasher of my diabetes. While it doesn’t do things “automatically” in that it’s not a closed-loop system, once I program it and connect it to my body, I don’t have to think about insulin for several days at a time. I bolus for meals and I correct blood sugars as needed, but for the most part, the pump sits on my hip and infuses insulin into my body throughout the day, without being reminded or poked or harassed. It’s simply another way to “wash the dishes,” so to speak, but it’s so much easier, and cleaner, and less intrusive in my life. Fewer needles against my skin, fewer moments when I worry about overnight blood sugars, fewer moments when I spend the morning hours with dawn phenomenon-elevated blood sugars. If such a thing as “dishpan hands” exists in diabetes management, the pump helps take that rub away.
“Did you seriously just compare your pump to a dishwasher?” my husband asked, laughing at me.
“Yep.”
“Your pump is worth like fifteen dishwashers, price-wise.”
It’s the most expensive replacement part I have ever encountered, but when I think about days of seven, eight … nine? injections per day just to achieve a baseline of “feeling fine,” I’m grateful that technology has progressed to this point. Diabetes technology now is so different than when I was first diagnosed, when at-home glucose meters were viewed as revolutionary. While I know I can still “wash the dishes by hand,” my diabetes management is so much smoother, and more streamlined, with my pump.
Well, my hip is my hip replacement appliance. Then the insulin pump. Of course, my hip has lasted longer, so far anyway.
You can buy 100 insulin syringes for $20.00/box.
I have been living with diabetes for how many years now?
well let me see….
I got it back in 2007.
And we are almost at the end of 2017.
If my mathematics teacher was good enough, I think that’s more than a decade now.
Am in college now. The tough thing is the fact that I still am using injections.
So, yes, I still can’t afford a dish washer yet.
You know what that means?
I will tell you….
It means that a walk in the park with my kids will have to be postponed until I can afford a dish washer. Good thing, no kids yet.
Thank you for this post.
Good analogy! Our dishwasher was recently replaced, too, and now I’ll be lookin’ at it a little differently!
Just as the dishwashers have changed over time, so has the care of this disease. Incredible changes have taken place. Dishwashers are quiet these days. They do a better job with a lot less noise. Unlike our old one, who let everyone know it had dishes in it!
Diabetes care is a lot quieter, too. Pumps made that possible -they do our work for us, and they do a much better job.
I’ve had DM Type I for 43 years. Diagnosed when I was 13, in 1975. We knew “so much” (ha) about diabetes that when I came home from having a glucose tolerance test, my mom made me a bunch of pancakes and I ate them with regular syrup. (I had been fasting and was hungry, mind you!)
Probably put my glucose well over a 1000 at that point. I know it was VERY high during the tolerance test. My tolerance was quite high. No sugar spilled in my urine. I had to be admitted to the hospital then, so we went back and began to learn about diabetes and what it meant for me.I learned how to give an injection by using an orange (with the peeling on) and a syringe! (My muscles never did get as tough as those oranges!)
It’s been a long road. Anyone who can comment with tips on how they cope, I’d be glad to read them.
I’m SO glad for my pump, which I’ve had for 5 years now. Didn’t ever know there was such a thing until not so long before that. I won’t go back. I’m in the process of getting a new pump – the first one just plain wore out – just like the dishwasher.
After all, it’s used everyday!