insulin pumps versus injection

[Witchy Mum]

As a parent of a newly diagnosed teenager, can you tell me the difference in pumps and injections. The pump sounds less invasive, My daughter is on 4 infections a day and is fed up and getting sore. We do alternate the injection sites but she is fed up with needles. Is a pump more or as effective and what criteria is needed to have one?

 

[Tina63]

I have been told it's a postcode lottery. Some health authorities fund them, others don't. A friend had to move hospitals to get one (different county 15 miles away). Not fair is it?

 

[novorapidboi26]

There are a lot of points regarding pumping that can be discussed, but ultimately a successfully pumping patient has the ability to have really tight control............this doesn't mean success is easy or that some days will be inexplicable.........

On a whole, from a currently non pumping diabetic I would say they are brilliant, but you will need to do some homework, best place is the pumping section on here, and if your daughter is genuinely up for it get her team involved....

 

[Northerner]

Hi Anna, welcome to the forum 🙂 You will find many people here who would never return their pumps and will be able to give you all the ins and outs 🙂 I'd suggest having a look at the INPUT website, which will give you lots of info, and will also be very supportive of your efforts to obtain a pump for your daughter, should you decide it would be helpful for her in order to manage her diabetes well: http://www.input.me.uk/

 

[Adrienne]

Hiya

How old is your daughter?

Has she met anyone on a pump, that would be the best thing to do if you can. Where abouts are you in the country? Sorry lots of questions.

Have you heard of the Children with diabetes email group. There are loads and loads of children, of all ages on there on pumps, you will get a true picture of what mum's think (and the odd dad) and what the kids think as well.

www.childrenwithdiabetesuk.org

My daughter is almost 11 and has been pumping for over 4 years. If they tried to take our pump away they would have to fight me for it and I would win !!!

It is life changing. Now I'm not going to lie to you. It is hard work, damned hard work with lots of finger tests.

The canula where the insulin goes into needs changing ever 2 or 3 days and that bit is easy and fairly pain free. My daughter says pain free. There are then no injections. You have to be carb counting or learn how to do it.

Not all hospitals do pumps, some are not quite in the 21 century yet and need to buck up their ideas big time. You may well need to move hospital if yours doesn't do them but that is not a problem either and if you are thinking about it and do need to change, I would do that sooner rather than later due to the big change happening in the NHS, none of us know what is going to happen.

INPUT are great for information and can help you as well.

On the CWD email group, you can get your daughter put in touch with other teens her age and they can chat about it if your daughter has any questions, sometimes its good to talk to your peers.

Take care and ask any question.

🙂

 

[Witchy Mum]

pumps versus injections

Hi Anna, welcome to the forum 🙂 You will find many people here who would never return their pumps and will be able to give you all the ins and outs 🙂 I'd suggest having a look at the INPUT website, which will give you lots of info, and will also be very supportive of your efforts to obtain a pump for your daughter, should you decide it would be helpful for her in order to manage her diabetes well: http://www.input.me.uk/

Thank you all so much for getting back to me so quickly. We have a meeting withthe diaetic team tomorrow and I feel better attending with the info i have now. I have printed out the INPUT pages so feel prepared to ask the relevant questions. I am so glad I have found this site. It has helped my daughter too.🙂

 

[novorapidboi26]

Thank you all so much for getting back to me so quickly. We have a meeting withthe diaetic team tomorrow and I feel better attending with the info i have now. I have printed out the INPUT pages so feel prepared to ask the relevant questions. I am so glad I have found this site. It has helped my daughter too.🙂

Good job, I hope it goes well and your questions are answered............🙂

 

[Witchy Mum]

pumps versus injections

Hiya

How old is your daughter?

Has she met anyone on a pump, that would be the best thing to do if you can. Where abouts are you in the country? Sorry lots of questions.

Have you heard of the Children with diabetes email group. There are loads and loads of children, of all ages on there on pumps, you will get a true picture of what mum's think (and the odd dad) and what the kids think as well.

www.childrenwithdiabetesuk.org

My daughter is almost 11 and has been pumping for over 4 years. If they tried to take our pump away they would have to fight me for it and I would win !!!

It is life changing. Now I'm not going to lie to you. It is hard work, damned hard work with lots of finger tests.

The canula where the insulin goes into needs changing ever 2 or 3 days and that bit is easy and fairly pain free. My daughter says pain free. There are then no injections. You have to be carb counting or learn how to do it.

Not all hospitals do pumps, some are not quite in the 21 century yet and need to buck up their ideas big time. You may well need to move hospital if yours doesn't do them but that is not a problem either and if you are thinking about it and do need to change, I would do that sooner rather than later due to the big change happening in the NHS, none of us know what is going to happen.

INPUT are great for information and can help you as well.

On the CWD email group, you can get your daughter put in touch with other teens her age and they can chat about it if your daughter has any questions, sometimes its good to talk to your peers.

Take care and ask any question.

🙂

Thanks Adrienne. I have put my name on cwd, but my email is not working at moment so cant get in yet!! She was diagnosed in Feb so we are very new to this. We do count carbs and adjust insulin depending on bg readings. Shopping is twice as long and now when I bake I have to weigh things!! No more cooking by sight, hopefully that will change soon, already I know what carbs for her main meals!! The pump looks like it would be benificial as we do numerous blood checks now anyway as she is not yet confident about listening to her body. The slightist thing and she checks her blood. I have tried to explain that she was bad tempered every month before she had diabeties, and how do you tell the difference between a teenager asleep and a coma?! When she came out of hospital at first I needed to check her bloods at 3am/ She never woke yet her bloods were fine!! She would sleep through anything!! Everyone from the local chemist to the gp and thediabeti team have been so helpful and informative, and I never realised how many diabetics were out there!! A whole new world. Thanks again for your help

 

[Witchy Mum]

pumps versus injections

Thanks Adrienne. I have put my name on cwd, but my email is not working at moment so cant get in yet!! She was diagnosed in Feb so we are very new to this. We do count carbs and adjust insulin depending on bg readings. Shopping is twice as long and now when I bake I have to weigh things!! No more cooking by sight, hopefully that will change soon, already I know what carbs for her main meals!! The pump looks like it would be benificial as we do numerous blood checks now anyway as she is not yet confident about listening to her body. The slightist thing and she checks her blood. I have tried to explain that she was bad tempered every month before she had diabeties, and how do you tell the difference between a teenager asleep and a coma?! When she came out of hospital at first I needed to check her bloods at 3am/ She never woke yet her bloods were fine!! She would sleep through anything!! Everyone from the local chemist to the gp and thediabeti team have been so helpful and informative, and I never realised how many diabetics were out there!! A whole new world. Thanks again for your help

SORRY, Forgot to answer your question, she is 15 and we live in Liverpool.

 

[Adrienne]

Thanks Adrienne. I have put my name on cwd, but my email is not working at moment so cant get in yet!! She was diagnosed in Feb so we are very new to this. We do count carbs and adjust insulin depending on bg readings. Shopping is twice as long and now when I bake I have to weigh things!! No more cooking by sight, hopefully that will change soon, already I know what carbs for her main meals!! The pump looks like it would be benificial as we do numerous blood checks now anyway as she is not yet confident about listening to her body. The slightist thing and she checks her blood. I have tried to explain that she was bad tempered every month before she had diabeties, and how do you tell the difference between a teenager asleep and a coma?! When she came out of hospital at first I needed to check her bloods at 3am/ She never woke yet her bloods were fine!! She would sleep through anything!! Everyone from the local chemist to the gp and thediabeti team have been so helpful and informative, and I never realised how many diabetics were out there!! A whole new world. Thanks again for your help

Hi Anna

Well your daughter sounds a very intelligent and altogether teenager. It is all about the testing so she is right to keep testing, she needs to get in tune with her body and by testing she is doing just that.

My daughter never wakes at night when hypo and she never wakes when I test her and even drinks her coke through a straw whilst asleep for any hypos. Quite amazing. I'm so pleased you are experiencing helpful people, that is exactly how it should be.

It is great you are carb counting already. I think that that is one of the most daunting things to start with but you'll get the hang of it and will one day be able to look at a plate and just know.

This support forum is a great resource especially for someone your daughter's age as there are lots of 20 somethings around who have just been through what your daughter is experiencing. If she is open to a pump and can get one, then my advice is grab it with both hands and say thank you very much, you will not look back at all.

The email list can be very busy. Some people do open a googlemail or hotmail account purely for that but you don't have to read all of them, only the relevant ones.

As for the sleeping and the coma question, I think you would know. This is where us mums differ from the people with diabetes on this forum. I poke or pinch my daughter quite a lot 'just to make sure' pretty much every night. I still do that even after 11 years. It is scary stuff this diabetes but it does become easier as you get used to dealing with it.
🙂

 

[bev]

I think the best thing to do is talk with others who have pumps as they can answer all the questions you may have. I know two of my coworkers have pumps but they didn't get pumps until they were in there twenties. While they do have to do test often, they seem to like them. It would be great if they could create a pump that also tested your levels so you never had to prick you fingers and the machine did everything for you.

Hi ChaseW,

My son (13) is on a pump that has sensors. The sensors take his blood glucose readings every few minutes and send the data to his pump - so, in theory, we dont need to do a finger prick test. However, we still do them because there can be a time lag between the sensor reading and the 'real time' reading of the finger prick test - but the sensor does warn us of both a hypo and hyper and this helps to avoid the very low or very high levels. My son's HBA1C has dropped from 9.6% (on MDI) to 6.8% on the pump.🙂Bev