A new chapter

I know most of you who read my blog know us on a personal basis. If you don't, I'll give you just a little background and that will help you understand why today was so special to me.

Our youngest son, Hunter, was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes on January 29th, 2004 at the age of 8. He was in 3rd grade. Hunter has never let this slow him down and we have never let him use this as an excuse or a crutch. If you want to know more about his story, just ask. I don't want to bore you with all the details. Seriously if you know someone dealing with this, please feel free to have them contact me. Now, on to how special today was!

Today, April 9th, is the day that Hunter got to use his Real Time Glucose Monitoring System. You're saying "Woo-hoo. What does that mean?" :) Well, this system continuously reads his blood glucose (sugar) and sends that information to his insulin pump. This will help him keep a better management on his sugar levels and also allow him to have less finger sticks each day.

Hunter's daily routine right after being diagnosed was learning how to count carbs, checking his sugar around 10-13 times per day and using needles for insulin injections 4 times per day. Then we moved to the insulin pump after that first year. He went down to around 6-8 finger sticks a day and changing a pump site every 3 days. Now, going through the teenage years, we're still using the insulin pump, but are back to checking around 10-15 times per day! The pump has been great and was about as advanced as technology had gotten.

Well, having a child with any disease or disability has its challenges. We have prayed for a cure to Diabetes and believe it can happen during Hunter's lifetime. This is why we are active in our local walks for Diabetes. When we learned the Real Time Glucose Monitor (from now on I will abbreviate it as RTGM) had been approved, we were excited. Although it is still not an easily accesible item, it can be approved by insurance.

What the RTGM does is check Hunter's sugar and infrared that information to his insulin pump every 5 minutes. This will give him better control, better knowledge of highs and lows coming on and less finger sticks. It doesn't take the place of finger sticks (but that technology will definitely be here in his lifetime), but it will aleviate his need for so many during the course of a day.

So, today was a great day! Hunter learned how to use the RTGM and we also got a USB port that will upload all his information to a website where we (and most importantly his Endocrinologist) can review the data and find patterns and problems. We hope this will be a great asset to him and really help him live to his fullest by helping lower his risks for long term health problems.

We thank God each day for our children's health and for the people who work behind the scenes to use their talents to make this technology. :)