Last week I was speaking to one of my friends, who is also the mother of my son’s best friend, about his diabetes management. She was so excited and hopeful for the future as she and her son have been attending classes to learn how to use the insulin pump. Since her son is really into sports she’s hoping the pump will help manage his sugar. Her technique for the past year has been to keep his levels high right before he engages in a lot physical activity so he doesn’t drop way low during exercise. The problem is that keeping the sugar level high for extended periods causes ketones in the urine.

“Ketones are an acid remaining when the body burns its own fat. When the body cannot get enough glucose from the blood to use as energy (in the case of type 2 diabetics it may receive very little glucose, in type 1 cases it will receive none), it will begin to burn fat. When the body is burning too much fat, it may cause ketones to become present in the bloodstream.”

The lab says that if his next test is high he will have to do a twenty four hour collection. Apparently this extended high can cause permanent damage to the heart, the kidneys and the liver. It’s very scary being the mother of a diabetic child and making all of the decisions that can affect the quality of life of your child. So I was very happy for her and her son about getting the pump.

They were both pretty excited at the prospect of not have to take his Lantis shot every night at bed time once they get the pump as I guess it’s a painful injection. The Lantis is suppose to last for twenty four hours, so if you forget to take it on time, you have to move it back just one hour at a time. The last time he spent the night at our house he couldn’t take the injection until 11 pm because he had forgotten the night before until midnight. Lantis has to be refrigerated too, so it can be kind of a hassle to deal with when you’re not at home. They were having some difficulty with the predictability of maintaining his levels with this drug as well.

My excitement diminished a little when I spoke to another friend who told me that her daughter’s pump somehow lost its calibration when the batteries died. First of all this isn’t supposed to happen. If she had realized it had happened there wouldn’t have been much of a problem, however she didn’t. She couldn’t understand why she kept spiking and couldn’t get it under control. It was several days before she realized the problem was with the pump.

“With insulin pump therapy you CAN:
• Exercise when you want – without having to eat first
• Worry less about going low
• Eat what you want, when you want1
• Be free from multiple daily shots
• Get your A1C on target
• Reduce your risk of eye, kidney & nerve disease2”

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