Ok so first of all an update on the health kick with the 640g and Smartguard . It has been around 4 months and I’m happy to say I have never felt better. I have lost over 15kg and increased muscle mass and have done this with no major hypos. I monitor my levels very closely and make sure Smartguard is in place so that it stops me from having to treat minor lows.
I have had what I would say is a good HbA1C over the last 14 years with it predominantly between Ng I. The 5’s however I was elated when I got my recent results and I had gone to 4.9.
There is 2 ways to look at the A1C result because it can be misleading or it can look false because if you have a lot of highs and lows it will average it out so you don’t see the peaks and troughs which as we all know is bad. It needs to be seen in conjunction with everyday results also.
If I had been having excessive amounts of treaded hypos I wouldn’t be happy with a 4.9 result at all however knowing through having my pump and CGM on my side always I know that I am within my set range 99.99% of the time which is great to me.
Now to what I’m even more excited about - the future of the technology that is coming for us. Having the 640g pump with the CGM and Smartguard has been a game changer for both me and my daughter , in all honesty our whole family. But this is only a step towards the goal of being able to have a certified half closed loop system that will be able to monitor your BGL’s in real-time and make decisions for you. Scary I know but with the confidence I now have with the current Smartguard instance I have complete faith that the next step will make an even better impact on living life with this disease.
Do not get me wrong we are still hanging out for a cure but I do t think we are much closer to that than we were some 30 odd years ago when I was diagnosed so I sit and watch and take advantage of the technology that will take at least one decision from me and automate it in a natural way.
So what am I talking about when I say a certified half closed loop system. So the Medtronic 640g pump was only the first step of many. This system predicts lows and shuts down the pump to lessen the curve of the drop. Then when rising again it will restart giving the set basal rate. This works great but there is still the need to manage basal rates and also manage to bolus and give corrections for higher BSL’s.
Now the next step is the 670g pump. This has been released in the US however we are waiting for the approval here in Aus but we hope by early 2019 it will be here. This pump when combined with the CGM takes automation further. It still has the prediction of the lows however when in auto mode the algorithms take the need of basal rates away because it reads your BSL and makes real time calculations to set the rates automatically. It also self corrects for highs also. To me this is amazing... scary but amazing. This still isn’t a fully closed loop artificial pancreas but being able to focus on each layer and step allows for the step that is a little closer to having a device with each component and layer working in unison.
One thing I taught myself a long time ago with this disease is that everything we do at one point or another is scary. Whether it was the first time you gave yourself injections, the time where you had a bad low, the time where a virus threw you into DKA or even the time where you move to a pump and start to slowly trust that it can help you control things. All of these scary times can be overcome by information, practice and giving it a go. I tell my daughters in general life that to understand something and to have a true opinion you need to at least try and it is certainly no different here.
This technology effects our whole family, it allows us to sleep at night knowing that we won’t just get woken up with alarms but we will have the pump working with us to keep us safe and to allow us to wake up the next day. It allows my daughters (and trust me they are now old enough to hold me accountable if I am having a rough management day) to know that everything will be ok. Not just now but long I to the future as we stand the best possibility of keeping complications at bay by having great control.
I tell you what I’m more excited than fearful with this disease by having technology that will make a long life easier and more manageable. No it’s not a cure but while we wait I am looking forward to the steps to come because this is only the start.
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