The Turnage Family, Hartsville, SC
The following story tells the individual experience of someone using insulin pump therapy and frequent blood sugar monitoring to manage his/her diabetes. As you read, please remember that the experience is specific to the individual. While clinical studies support pump therapy and frequent testing as effective tools for controlling blood sugars, results may vary, and not every response will be the same.
We are the parents of three adult diabetic children who all wear the Medtronic Diabetes insulin pumps. Our daughter, Hillary, was diagnosed in 1991, and our youngest son, Jeremy, was diagnosed in 1994. Heath, our oldest son was involved in the care of his sister and brother. On April 27th of 2005, Heath was newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. As parents we felt despair, but this time we knew that he could also have a better life with an insulin pump, as we have seen the difference that the insulin pump has made in the lives of our other two children.
Our children have achieved their goals of better blood sugars, very much-improved A1Cs, and freedom in their life that they have never had. With the pump, Jeremy's best A1C ever has been 6.1 and Hillary's is 6.8! Having three children with diabetes will be a challenge for our family, but we have learned a lot, and we hope to teach our oldest son how to take care of himself. As parents, we've lived with diabetes since 1991, but we don't know what it feels like to be diabetic. Insulin pump therapy is the best thing that we have ever done for our children. If we can't get a cure, the insulin pump is the next best thing.
The Turnage Family - Hartsville, SC
To find out if intensive diabetes management using insulin pump therapy and frequent blood sugar monitoring is right for you, call 1-866-948-6633 (toll-free) for a referral to a diabetes specialist.
