Love that Pump

02/27/08 Treatment Options

By Eric Devine

"Dude, you’ll love it. I swear bro!”

The insulin pump trainer sat across my kitchen table from me, beaming his support.  I was poised to “connect” after my rather unconventional trainer had walked me through the set-up process. He was a pump user, or “pumper” as he called himself and others in the fold, and he was an exuberant example of the pseudo-cyborg seeking better-health through tighter glucose control that I was about to become. There was a weak smile on my face, but I nodded assent at his encouragement and plunged the infusion set into my skin.       

The pain was no worse than an injection and the site was completely painless once I removed the needle, leaving the soft cannula in place. I did fumble with the adhesive pad’s backing, but managed to affix the entire set with relative ease. Then I filled the cannula and was, according to my trainer who applauded when I finished, “Good to go.”  But was I?

I smiled, politely, and for some reason, stood. The pump was connected to my skin, but not attached to my belt. It nose-dived before me and dangled like a bungee jumper, the weight pulling at my abdomen. It was an odd sensation, resembling an umbilical cord.  

I reigned in my pump and promptly sat. In love? No. Scared? Absolutely.

I’ve had four pumps over the past 10 years and have experienced all the perverse situations which befall all of us pumpers like:  

• Catching the tubing on a doorknob
• Getting tangled in the tubing while sleeping
• Running out of insulin or battery power at the most inopportune times
• Negotiating a disconnection time during an intimate encounter
• Swimming
• Sunbathing
• Working out

  I've also had occasional complications managing "pumping" like:

• Forgetting to bolus
• Forgetting to change the basal rate
• Forgetting to change the clock for daylight savings
• Having to change the site three times in one day
• Spurting blood from a pulled site
• Occluded sites and air bubbles in the tubing

The list could go on indefinitely to match the new and challenging scenarios of life with a pump.          

It would be easy to dismiss such a product as unlovable, but I’ve neglected to highlight the positive aspects that have kept me in this dance for the past 10 years. With a pump I can:

• Sleep in
• Eat at whatever time I feel
• Easily adjust to changes in activity—literally at the push of a button
• Avoid a blood sugar roller-coaster ride
• Curtail the “dawn phenomenon”
• Obtain single-digit HbA1c’s
• Have a sense of freedom,

All of this makes it worth it, in spite of all the aforementioned difficulties.       

Therefore, yes, I do love my pump. We’re married in this hormonal quest for symbiosis, and I’m remaining true to my vow, for better or for worse, because I’ve felt what my trainer expressed all those years ago: euphoria. It comes and goes, but when it does, I acknowledge the source, strapped securely to my hip.