And if you stick around, there are SO many people here who would be more than happy to meet with your virtually via Zoom to show you anything/everything you will never learn from an Endo/educator where pump technologies are concerned. I know I would be happy to meet with you regarding the Omnipod if you went that route.
We’re all about helping each other improve our collective lives and the lives of our loved ones.
THANK YOU! Love this, and so glad I found this group. I will likely have more questions about pumps as we try to make a decision.
My son Cody (18) would be happy to show you around the Tandem Tslim and the G6 integration. We like this pump very much, we tried the Omnipod, but he liked the Tslim more. If you do go with a tubed pump make sure to change every handle in your house into one like this:
that way you will know where your son is at all times by the cursing.
We switched from the clumpy, hard to use Glucagon to Baqsimi
rotflma. Too funny.
I don’t think it will be that long! This is recent announcement. This story was from yesterday.
I needed the good laugh!!
I want to emphasize, though, that I wouldn’t stop with pumping…pumping was great, but I didn’t see true bg management until I switched to loop. So, I would personally recommend get to pump as soon as you can, get comfortable with it, then switch to looping. The ability for loop to give auto boluses (micro-boluses) has truly turned our nights into bliss.
This is what our days look like most of the time, but we do have our spikes and lows just like any other diabetic…but we are in and out of both highs and lows QUICKLY…that’s the key. The lows and highs aren’t bad to visit briefly…you don’t want to stick around either area for too long…that’s the concern.
You should not have to eat for basal. We started with a higher basal and have knocked it back over the years because my kid is TIRED of having to eat low treatments. We still get a bunch of lows, despite our best efforts. He now hates all sugary foods.
Anyways, having a slightly strong basal I think can be okay during the day, but you really don’t want it night, when you have to wake up, and when their normal cortisol response to low blood sugar is quiescent. (This is why you often see Dexcom readings where a person can be LOW all night long without popping up.)
I’d try to do a basal test at night for sure.
yes but if you look at their study design, the trial is going to last until 2022. I’m not clear on whether they’re doing the full, phase 3 double-blinded placebo controlled thing in order to test vaccine efficacy, but if they are, it could very well become impossible to finish the trial as covid-19 cases get so low. I really hope they take antibody levels and safety data as sufficient, or else our kids will never get this vaccine.
BTW I signed up my kids so we’ll see if they get enrolled.
This is why I do like the idea of splitting his basal dose- can better fine tune it for day vs night.
Wow! That’s amazing. Ours don’t look like that, for sure. Yes, I agree on the auto correct and micro boluses. Seems like it would help us out tremendously, I just need to get there (another frustrating thing when it’s not “up to” me)
You’ll get there and the hard times you’re currently having will just be a distant memory. Stay strong! Those days are coming very soon! In the meantime we’ll be here to help you in any way we can…even if it’s just to listen to venting (which I have done plenty here in FUD).
Yes, you are right, approval will take longer than it did for adults. BUT, I was very encouraged to hear that it had at least started!
Thank you so much- that is very refreshing to hear. I thought I might just be fooling myself into thinking pump/loop will improve not only his health but our life as well. But it seems that really is the case based on all your input. I’ll be touching base re:pros/cons of the pumps you use to help better inform our decision, which I do hope comes sooner rather than later (I was really hoping before summer, so the endo is going to get an earful in April).
@diabeatit2020, just to mention a few general things.
There are a million posts here that can help you. But on the down-side, there are a million things to go through to try and figure it all out. It can really be overwhelming.
But just take some time and browse through the posts and we can point you in the right direction too, and help you find posts that are relevant to your situation.
It takes patience to try and sort through it all, so just take in a little bit at a time to digest it all. Don’t feel like you need to hurry up to figure it all out. 
One thing to mention - when I was your son’s age, there was no CGM or blood testing. So I had to rely on how I felt to know what my BG was. This has really helped me. Just a few minutes ago, I felt low. So I checked my BG on the meter. My meter said 54, but my Dexcom was saying flat 75. But because I have learned to trust how I can feel from doing it a thousand years, I don’t really need the Dexcom too much.
One thing that can help is for you to help your son assess how he feels when you check his meter or CGM. Like ask him, “How do you feel?” when you check. Help him learn to associate the feelings of high or low BG.
Here are a couple of references to it:
forum.fudiabetes.org/t/can-you-guess-your-bg-before-using-your-meter
forum.fudiabetes.org/t/beat-the-dexcom
Sorry, that is just one of a million things to read here.
And also, the other thing is that you may feel like diabetes is 95% of your son’s life right now. Or 80%, or something like that.
Eventually it gets to about 2%.
But everyone here is really about so much more than diabetes. We have hobbies and interests and experts in all kinds of fields. Swimmers and hockey players and ship captains and soccer player and field hockey players and computer programmers and cooks and yoga aficionado’s and pilots and pretty much everything.
So please feel free to share if your son has interests in hobbies or sports, because there are people here that can help make those easier to manage too. And helping him engage in his passions will also make diabetes much smaller.
This is exactly what I needed to hear, Eric, and thank you for that. You are absolutely right, I feel like since diagnosis, diabetes is about 90% of our life. I’m not sure he feels that way, as he isn’t yet the one managing things, but I know there are moments he feels it too (and those are the times hardest for me!). So it is so good to hear, from a diabetic like yourself, that eventually it will be there, in the background, always a part of him, but never all of him.
And, yes, I TOTALLY agree about lows and in fact have had this thought over the past few weeks. The nice thing about the dexcom is I can try to prevent lows. But I got to thinking that I may be doing more harm than good in some ways. I obviously don’t want him to be low long, or severly low long, but allowing him to feel the low so he can recognize it in himself is almost a built in safety feature. And it’s so silly because even in our early days without the CGM we certainly had lows, we treated them, and we moved on. I almost feel like in some ways dexcom INCREASED my anxiety because I can see those dang double down arrows. Ignorance is bliss, right? I actually think I handled the lows BETTER on just the meter, than when I can see it coming. Long story short, I’m learning to redfine my relationship with Dexter 
So in many ways you are right in that you have the advantage of years of learning to feel it in yourself, without relying on technology to tell you so.
Ethan will b 8 at the end of the month and all I hear about now is what he wants for his birthday! He’s every bit all boy, participates in TaeKwon Do (blue belt!), loves video games, and harrassing his older sister :). Right now he’s busy building a lego set. He’s a pretty laid back kid, with a great sense of humor. With summer coming up, he LOVES the pool and really improved on his swimming last summer. He would even ask in the dead of winter when the community pool is going to open for the season So he’s every bit of boy you’d expect an 8 year old to be, and I want to do everything to make sure diabetes doesn’t change that.
Again, I’m so glad I jumped into this group and so humbled by everyone’s willingness to take time out of their day to provide their knowledge, input, and encouragement. Truly, made my day. Thank you!
I 1000% agree with my friend and diabetes mentor, @Eric with having your son be able to recognize lows. Liam is nearly 100% accurate in knowing when he’s low and it’s because I did exactly what Erin indicated…I even make a game of it with Liam in the game Eric coined as “Beating the Dexcom” (If you search these forums for that term, “beat the dexcom”, you’ll actually find a lot of posts about it! lol). Can you guess your BG and come closer than what the Dexcom indicates you actually are. For Liam, the Dexcom has always been off when he’s showing really high and really low, but even when the CGM reads something good like 110, if Liam says he’s feeling low I know to always trust him because over the years I’ve challenged him to think to himself “how does my body feel right now” – when he’s really high, or really low. Over time he has learned to recognize when he’s low so for his school plan the Nurse/Teachers know that when Liam says he’s feeling low that means stop what you’re doing and do a finger stick because 9.995 times out of 10, he’s right. It’s such a critical skill to teach them so that when they get older they’re able to follow their sugars w/o the technology as Eric and other old-timers here at FUD had to do for decades before the CGM technology came along.
We also make sure to reward Liam when he gets closer and when he does help us recognize he’s low when the CGM is lying to us. We have a Pirates chest that we have all kinds of cheap toys in and he can dip in them during these times.
Not sure about your son, but Liam is actively interested in learning right now and helping and I LOVE that and encourage it in him. I don’t want to force anything onto him because I don’t want to cause burn-out, but I do want to encourage and praise him when he does want to take on some responsibilities. He knows how to do so many things now because he’s watched me for so long doing the things and he loves the feeling of being a “big boy” in doing things for himself as I watch on and cheer.
For me, the Dexcom has a different role. I think preventing lows is too much work, so for me the Dex’s job is to give me plenty of time to fix a low before I get into serious trouble. For me it’s a safety tool, not a perfection tool.
And the real advantage I get from the Dex is the ability to sugar surf, if you’ve heard of that term: By the recent shape of the graph I can decide whether or not to correct (with glucose or insulin) and if so, how strongly to correct. I had an example of that just tonight. I had a new kind of takeout dinner, guessed 40g carb, and bolused. My BG was 85. About 20 minutes later I looked at the graph. My BG was 105 and the graph was strongly curving upwards. So I changed my carb estimate to 70g, took the additional bolus, and checked back after another 20 minutes. 128 and almost flat. Because I saw the rise early in the graph and jumped on it, I didn’t have to try to correct a BG of 180 and watch it coast up to 260 before turning back down. The idea of sugar surfing is to use the most recent changes in the graph to suggest small early corrections rather than waiting for a big excursion to develop.
Because of my personality I don’t focus on the result, I just pay attention to the process. I push the BG in a good direction whenever it starts wandering off and let the results take care of themselves, which they do. This way I don’t get stressed or feel judged.
It’ll take about 6 months for you to go from “survival mode” to “new normal.” In between I feel like there’s a 3-month mark where you feel like your brain isn’t on fire from all the mental calculations and thinking required.
I started out this journey basically attending preschool with my son all day long and doing all his treatments, then eventually got to the point where the teachers did stuff, but I still had to come for bolusing.
By now, I do a full-day’s worth of work while glancing at my son’s blood sugar on a separate tab and occasionally checking in with his teacher with bolus or low treatment suggestions. He’s 6 and not very self sufficient yet. Some days do suck, but most days I barely have to stop what I’m doing for diabetes. The biggest hassle is just him remembering to pack his phone and Loop in the morning and honestly, we also have trouble with him: putting on his shoes, remembering his laptop for Zoom, changing his socks, etc. etc. etc. It’s sort of on par with all those things in terms of annoyance.
It gets waaaay easier.
