Pip’s Brave Patches

I can remember what it felt like those first few weeks.
My little girl was only three years old, with numerous other complications & disabilities including ones that made communicating difficult.
I can remember being utterly overwhelmed with trying to learn how to be her “pancreas” on top of everything else.
Crying in my pantry over feeling how restricted life already felt dealing with Celiac Disease, only to now learn a diet that included counting carbs and using math skills that I gladly gave up in elementary school.
I can remember the doctor teaching me about Hypoglycemia, also known as low blood sugar.
And the heaviness I felt as I learned to look out for the symptoms it created, that typically come on quite quickly.
Things like clumsiness, trouble talking, confusion, sweating, shakiness, weakness, loss of consciousness, seizures, or even death.
Sounds terrible, right?
And that wasn’t just it.
You had to be aware of blood sugar going high too, potentially causing Diabetic Ketoacidosis [DKA] and we had to watch for ketones.
Again, resulting in not-so-great things.
So, you can see the wild rollercoaster type 1 diabetes (T1D) can be.
Especially in a child like Pip, who is even more volatile and has other conditions that affect her little body.
When she was diagnosed, she could barely talk and the typical symptoms didn’t always appear when her blood sugar decided to take a ride.
I was constantly poking her little fingers.
I was barely sleeping because I feared something would happen in the night.
I was around the clock checking in on her.
And stress and anxiety were taking over my life.
The thought of sending her to school and having others learn to care for her like I had been wasn’t even an option.
UNTIL two little devices came into our lives, we like to call Pip’s “Brave Patches”.
The Dexcom G6 CGM System and the Omnipod® System*.
Pip tells anyone who will listen, that they are her “Mom’s Robots” working to help keep her safe.
And that’s exactly what they do.
They let me breathe a little easier.
Her Dexcom G6 connects to her little body and monitors her sugars around the clock and can send out an alert if
she is too low or too high.
It has allowed me to sleep easier and it is a device I tell every new parent whose child has been diagnosed with T1D to get.
The Omnipod® System gives us up to 3 days of around the clock insulin coverage and is a tubeless pump.
Perfect for her sensory needs and my need to try and control her blood sugar levels.
Both have made our T1D journey do-able.
And helped me not break, when I felt I was absolutely going to.
Pip may never be able to understand her body and know when her sugars are dropping or rising.
But me as her mom, and manager of her diabetes, can navigate it all so much easier because of devices like these.

Unsure if your child is ready for an insulin pump? Order a free Pod Experience Kit, which includes a sample needle-free Pod, and see what they think.