Pump Start!!!

Monday Alivia got a delivery from the UPS guy…

it was her Pink Ping pump!

She was so excited to open it up! 

She loved looking at it and was very excited to try it out.

It was hard for her to pack it up and wait until the next day when we met with the trainer.

Tuesday the trainer arrived at our house around 1pm and spent a good 2 hours going over the basic setup of the pump and showed us how to put a site on Alivia. Alivia did great! We used the numbing cream and she didn’t feel a thing! We didn’t actually fill the pump with insulin but the trainer wanted her to keep it on as long as possible so she could get a feel for it and she wanted Tony and I to play around with the pump and remote as much as possible.

1st site

 I drew the circle to show where I had put the magic cream...Daddy was a little off target.

As you can see she was very excited to start using her Hello Kitty pump pack...

Unfortunately her 1st site only lasted 6 hours. That evening we had gone to Old Navy and while looking at sunglasses she got the tiny amount of tubing that was showing stuck on a hook and didn’t notice so when she walked away the site got ripped out. She handled it very well! I did not have another set with me so I figured we’d just let her be for the night and try again the next morning, which we did. That day was a real test of how she would handle wearing it! We spent a good 6 hours playing and running around at the Children’s Museum and another few hours playing at the park. Every meal and snack I would use the pump and practice giving her insulin the whole time wishing I could use it for real! She did have a lot if trouble being able to lift the pack over her site to be able to pull her pants down to potty without rubbing it against it and by the end of the day a small corner of the adhesive was starting to peel up. Her only complaint all day was that the pack itched her, so that night I sewed a few pouches onto the front of her tank tops.

She loved these! Unfortunately I’m not the best at sewing and the weight of the pump eventually took it’s toll on the stitching. I do think that the tank tops work best for her right now so I plan on taking the rest of the fabric and the other tank tops to a professional to have done right, I’m sure they can make them to last.

Thursday morning we lost the 2nd site, the corner that had started peeling up the day before got stuck to the inside of her tank top and when she went to take off the tank top the site came with it. We chose not to waste another set and let her have one last day with nothing stuck to her body. We did however learn a very important lesson…IV prep is a MUST!!!

Finally Friday arrived and so did the trainer! It was a very quick lesson, actually more like a quiz, she had us do the site all on our own (we used the IV prep this time!) and re-set a few of the targets, my idea of Alivia’s target and her Drs were a bit off, I like her in the 70-150 range during the day and 150-250 at night and he wanted it more like 100-250 during the day and 150-300 at night. We settled on 100-200 during the day because all it really means is that if she was below 100 the pump wouldn’t have me cover much if any of a snack and it wouldn’t have me correct her until she hit 201. And 150-250 at night. She reminded me that they weren't set in stone and I could always change them when we got everything fine tuned.

She answered a few of my questions, wished us luck and was off! Just in time for lunch!

That 1st meal shot free was priceless!!!

We’ve had pretty good numbers the last few days except for a few near disasters the pump caught and we were able to avoid…Thank Goodness for the IOB feature! Going to bed at 90 with almost 3 units on board would have been really really bad! I loved that I could play around with the carb amounts on the meter and know exactly how many carbs she would need to cover the IOB…a whopping 40 grams! I never would of given her that many carbs with out covering before but I trusted the pump and it worked out PERFECTLY 168 ALL NIGHT LONG! I called the Blood Glucose Management Team the next morning to figure out why she had so much IOB in the 1st place and she said it can take the Lantus a few days to completely leave her system. It happened again the next night but not again since! Overall I’m very happy with our choice!!!

Thanks for all your guys help and support!!!

Keep your eye out for my next post… “Help us name Baby “A”