New pump helps diabetics

SXC.HU

Those who suffer from type 1 diabetes have to check their blood glucose (BG) levels regularly, often before they eat.

Imagine being 13 again and looking forward to skipping 17 days of school to go on a European cruise.
    Now, imagine being forced to cancel the trip the day before and being hospitalized for three days instead.
    This is what happened to me seven months ago when I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
   Most people think that type 1 and type 2 diabetes are very similar. My family had these same perceptions of the disease.
   “I didn’t even know there were types of diabetes,” my mom, Irina, said.
   But, as we quickly learned, they are totally different. The only similarity is that, in both, you have to control your blood glucose levels. Type 2 diabetes, the more common of the two, usually develops in people who are overweight. You can manage your type 2 diabetes and even reverse it by exercising and eating healthy.
   Type 1 diabetes, however, is not connected to your weight. Sometimes, it is genetic, but no one has been able to pinpoint the exact cause. The main difference is that type 1 diabetics, unlike type 2 diabetics, are completely dependent on insulin – the hormone that controls blood glucose – for their entire lives.
   Think of type 1 diabetes this way: Your body is like a big city and your pancreas is the big industrial sector filled with factories (beta cells) that produce keys (insulin). The majority of the food we eat eventually breaks down into glucose; think of glucose as the people coming into the city.
   The people need houses: all bodily cells, particularly muscle cells. But, in a type 1 diabetic’s body, the factories produce very few keys, so most of the people become homeless and begin to roam through the blood stream, trapped. This excess glucose is poisonous, and the body disposes of it though the urine.
    In the days leading up to my hospitalization, my pancreas stopped functioning and produced only a negligible amount of insulin. I felt incredibly weak and tried to remedy this by infusing my body with a lot of food for energy, but my body was not absorbing any of it, resulting in a slow starvation.
   I learned all of this in the Diabetes Education Centre at the Markham Stouffville Hospital, where I was hospitalized the day after I was diagnosed.
   A whole crew of doctors and nurses came in and out of my room constantly to teach me about the new lifestyle I had to adjust to.
   They put me on a strict schedule. From that day forth, every carbohydrate that I eat has had to be perfectly balanced with the amount of insulin I need to inject into my body so I can process it.

I had to measure the right amount of insulin to inject into my body before each of my meals

   Practically everything has carbs in it, even carrots. One of the few things that don’t is cheese; I ended up eating a lot of cheese in the first few weeks because I was often too lazy to go through the whole measurement process.
   I had to measure my blood glucose by pricking my finger and bleeding onto a special strip for the meter to read. I need to maintain my blood glucose levels in a healthy range, between four and eight millimoles per litre (mmol/l), which is a lot harder to do than it sounds.
   Then, according how much sugar was in my blood, I had to measure the right amount of insulin to inject into my body before each of my meals. At first, all the needles were bothersome, but soon I got used to them and started injecting myself.
   Another important part of my routine is that I had to eat every meal at the same time every day. For example, I had to wake up at 7:30 every morning to eat breakfast – even on Saturdays– and, no matter what I was doing at 1 p.m., I have to stop to eat lunch.
    In the first few weeks, my family and I had trouble managing my diabetes, and we called my specialist, Dr. Susan Kirsch, for consultation and advice frequently. If I had happened
to inject too much insulin into my body, my blood glucose would be too low.
    When my blood glucose levels dip too low, I feel weak, hungry and get mood swings as well as headaches.
    Sometime my blood glucose drops when I do physical activity, too. If I don’t inject enough insulin, it gets too high and I can fall into a coma.
   A month ago I got the pump, a small mechanical device that looks kind of like a cell phone and is basically an artificial pancreas.
   I  still have to prick my finger to measure my blood glucose levels, and I still have to inject myself with insulin before eating anything. But, there is a needle that is always attached to my stomach and the pump sends insulin into it through a tube with the click of a button, much easier than manually measuring the exact amount needed and carrying around syringes. I still have to do the math before I eat, but the best part is that I can eat whenever I want now.
   According to the Canadian Diabetes Association, diabetes affects about 2 million Canadians, but only eight percent of them get type 1 diabetes. Most type 1 cases are diagnosed
in childhood or in your early teens, though people can be diagnosed when they are as old as 45.
    Your odds of getting type 1 diabetes as a university student are relatively low, but if you are constantly thirsty, urinating much more than usual and feeling very weak, even if you eat plenty of food, go see your doctor right away.