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Still Counting...

"Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you" -Aldous Huxley

Let Me Count The Ways…

As each new day comes and goes living on our sailboat Tioga, it reinforces our decision of switching to insulin pump therapy in order to control our youngest son, Gerrit’s diabetes. Whether we reflect on offshore passages, overnight inland trips, countless potluck gatherings among other cruisers, or regular everyday living, we realize we could not have completed a trip of this degree without the Animas insulin pump.

Life on Tioga causes relentless fluctuations in our two sons’, Joel and Gerrit, appetites. Whether it is sea air or the fact that we live outside, some days, especially when our boat is in motion traveling to our next destination, their appetites can be insatiable. Maybe it is their stomachs way of fending off seasickness, keeping it full at all times! Other days are so hot that the last thing on anyones' mind is eating.

On passages, sea conditions can leave our family with absolutely no schedule. Some days it is a struggle to get any food, let alone regular snacks and meals. Sleep schedules become totally confused due to the day and night watches required to safely navigate our boat. To have ‘N’ insulin (long acting, back ground), peaking at noon or any other time could have been catastrophic. Seasickness or any other sickness is a major concern of ours. The ability to either not give bolus insulin or totally disconnect the basal insulin along with careful monitoring is a huge relief.

As I am sure all of you know, eating and tasting various foods from different cultures is such a large part of traveling. When an unexpected culinary delight presents itself at the most unexpected time, the pleasure of sampling or filling one’s stomach is so wonderful. An insulin pump allows us total freedom to indulge in such opportunities. Prior to leaving Calgary, we had an electronic weigh scale in our kitchen and we often weighed many foods. When the day came to leave Calgary, we decided we needed to throw away the weigh scale and teach Gerrit the life skills needed to enjoy eating, as well as how to maintain his health with the use of his pump. It has been a learning experience for us all as we estimate carbohydrates in foods never experienced before. We were concerned we may see a rise in Gerrit’s normally very good Hba1c blood tests, but to date have stayed right on track.

Sleep schedules are very liberal these days. I shudder to think of our family camping back in Alberta, where we would have to wake Gerrit up at 8am after a late night around the fire, in order to get food and insulin going on time. He would still be half asleep let alone feel like eating breakfast. Our family made the most of it as that was our pre- pump life, but times are so much simpler now.

Sure, there are still some ups and downs. The pump requires diligent testing as blood sugars can rise extremely fast with no ‘N’ insulin to fill in a gap. Some foods, like pizza, with a very high fat content can cause extreme differences in digestion. Pizza takes hours and hours to digest, which makes the ‘extended bolus’ feature on our pump, one we really like. We can set bolus insulin to be delivered slowly over 3 or 4 hours, which works very well in these situations.

Hardly a day goes by for us where we don’t look at each other and say, ‘Thank God for the pump.’ It has given Gerrit the chance to be a little boy who can have an ice cream when it’s hot or to simply say "No thanks Mom, I’m not hungry."

In actual fact, I cannot begin to count the ways the pump has changed our life.

Gerrit’s mom,

Sheila Richards