Hardly. Pioneers venture into and explore unknown territory. There may well have been pioneering practitioners and patients elsewhere, but my healthcare providers saw the pump as just a more modern and convenient way to give injections. (Lucky you, no more needles!) Never was there any suggestion that the pump afforded patients any autonomy. Never was there any suggestion that patients might adjust their doses on their own. As on injections, you had your set diet plan, and your doctor told you to take, say, 8 units at breakfast. Whether you ate one slice of toast or six, whether your fasting BG was low or high, you bolused your 8 units. You’d go to your doctor and he’d say, “Looks like you’re a little high after breakfast. Why not try 9 units. See you in six months.” I wasn’t given a variable insulin dose scale for another decade. It wasn’t until 1995 that anyone told me about carb counting.
I think @MM2 is right, that younger people are more ready to try out and tweak newer treatments and technology, whereas for older generations (and at 56, I’m not that old), we were more used to doing what doctors told us. And of course we didn’t have forums like this, where ideas and experiments could be shared. AIDS was/is a tragedy, but one good outcome was that, because of inertia in the medical establishment, patients began to take their treatment into their own hands; patients told doctors what treatment regimen they wanted to try. The earth shook. Today it’s totally routine to go to your doctor and say, “I want to try this,” or to try something on your own without even discussing it. That’s where we see the pioneers.