Hey Guys!
Please help me! I've been pumping for less than a year and I love it! I'm going to visit my T1 son Mark who is anxious to see it in action.
I could just expound on its virtues, but we know that it is a very complex issue - to pump or not to pump. He is happy with the pen and MDI, but he is seriously considering a pump.
My slant is of course that of a woman. I would like to be able to give him opinions from a guy point of view. What was your motivation? Has your experience fulfilled your expectations? What do you wish you had known before you committed to a pump? What are the pros and cons now that you've adjusted to life as a pumper. If you had it to do all over again, would you switch from MDI to a pump? And any other answer to questions you think HE might ask.
Thanks in advance. I'm not going til the 21st, so there's time to collect a real sampling of your experiences. I don't want to feel like I'm pushing him into anything.
Cindy
Well, here is a sorta biggie for us knuckle-draggers: instant adjustment of basal rate to match the task at hand.
For example if She Who Must Be Obeyed suddenly decides you need to be painting the house, and its 100F in the shade, you can instantly change your basal rate to match the effort. With MDI therapy, you will likely be chasing a low before long, and may need an hourly bit of carbs to stay within your target zone. With MDI you cant just throttle-back once the basal insulin dose is under your skin. With a pump you can do exactly this with a couple clicks of a button. And you can ramp-up the basal over time after you have cleaned the last brush.
I guess as a guy it all boils down to the benefits of immediate control. WE get to control the insulin delivery on-the-fly instead of having it the other way around.
Parting thought: if he is the type of guy who needs to be in control of the tv remote, he may just love being on a pump. 
Roark, you made my day! Thank you!
"Knuckle-draggers" !!!!! I haven't laughed so hard in ages! See... I must have your male input! And yes!! Of course he controls the remote!
C
Just press some buttons that turn on some lights. If you can press buttons that make some numbers on a screen change, that helps too. The ultimate would be to press buttons, have it light up, change numbers, AND make digital sounds all at the same time.
The male drive to aquire technology should kick in from there.
Honestly, I could answer "yes" to all of your questions execept the one that I would answer "I wish I had done this a long time ago" to the question what I wish I had known before, and "Lot's of cons, but the pros outweigh them" to the one that asks anout pros and cons.
Still, what got me in the front door was the idea that it's a piece of technology that I could play with to give me more options than MDI, nd the fact that I was getting really tired of trying to make MDI work against everything in my daily life that I was throwing at it.
Good luck!!
Total agreement! For me the benefit of the pump is the tech angle… Ie, control. You can do stuff that just isnt possible on MDI.
A great example (and one that will probably draw some fire, and perhaps rightly so) is the contrast between my sons “before pump” and “after pump” meals.
Before the pump, we had to eat a very disciplined meal plan as a family. The distribution of carbs, glycemic index, protein, etc was pretty strict. Even the timing of meals was critical, and snacks generally were required instead of optional. Diabetes ran our lives… Mostly.
After the pump, its a completely different game. Meals are ad hoc events once again. Junior eats pretty much what he wants, when he wants it, and can time it for whenever he gets hungry. In other words, HE IS IN CONTROL. Ya want pizza and breadsticks for dinner? No problem. Pasta? Its just a split bolus away. Want to sleep until noon on a weekend? Done. About the only recurring theme now is the ever-present “…did you bolus for that?” as he slinks away from the pantry with something non-chalantly stuffed in his cheeks.
YMMV, but for this family the pump made the difference between slavish drugery and feeling human again.
I submit to you that Man wasnt made to be a slave to anything except redheads and draft horses. Anything that gives us the freedom to decouple from the rigors of MDI is a Really Good Thing in this mans Man Cave. Hehehhe
There is a primal genetic need among the chromosomally challenged of the species to smell fresh from the factory plastic as it is liberated from shrink wrap. New car smell, anybody?
Seriously though, on my second endo visit my new doctor gave me a statistic that got my attention. To put it in a family friendly way, she mentioned off-hand that half of men who have had diabetes for 10 years or more suddenly find a deep personal interest in those medicine commercials that feature couples in separate bath tubs. Good performance with the A1C test translates into a much more happy love life. That will get and hold any guy's attention.
I read a lot of the literature pertaining to Type I and I cannot recall a study that compared MDI vs. Pumps that did not show that people on a pump had a lower overall A1C. It takes work but the rewards are worth the effort.
Wow. Methinks ol’Tom just threw the nuclear moose on the table! Thats a scary statistic to be sure.
New mantra for the Roarkster: “If ya wanna rut like a hog, better pack yer Novolog!”
Class dismissed.
I decided at the time that I didn't want to check the veracity of her claim. I figured why risk it and find out the hard way it was true?
Being a bit of a scientist myself, I think I wouldn't have been able to resist proving her wrong. (((ducking!)))
All jest aside, that is one *scary* statistic...
I really thank you guys! First of all for the best laughs I've had in days; and second of all for your particular perspectives. I had no idea that the TV remote began such a passion for technology! OK, maybe Steve Jobs rather than the TV remote, but I never would have guessed at your answers. I thought there would be talk of the inconvenience of being tethered with tubing, the inconveniences of showers and sex, and the drag of carb counting.
Mark will really love reading your hilarious conversation. Thanks again for letting him in on the male perspective. Your comments uniquely come from The Brain on Testosterone! Perfect!