Saturday, February 25, 2006

A very long appointment

Tommy says:
On Thursday, my Mom and I drove about 1 hour after dropping my brother off at school. I was happy to get out of school! We went to the same clinic where I went to get trained on my pump. My nurse, Sue was there to meet us. We went into the same room where I got trained on the pump. Lara from Medtronic was there with another nurse, Chris.

We started by putting in the sensor. A sensor looks a little like the pump infusion set. It helps take some of the fluid below my skin to be tested for sugar levels. There is a tool to help insert the sensor. It was a little confusing to put the sensor in the inserter. I felt it a little when I pushed the button to insert it. I could feel it for the first hour, but then I didn't even really know that it was there.

Then I stuck on my transmitter. I stuck a big padded sticker on the back of the transmitter and then stuck it onto my stomach. It felt like I was wearing a big band aid. We then plugged the cord that is attached to the transmitter into the sensor. The transmitter sends numbers from my body's fluid to the monitor.

After we had inserted the sensor and slapped on the transmitter, we had to tell the monitor to start calibrating. It takes 2 hours and 20 minutes to get a new sensor ready to read my numbers.

So while the Guardian was calibrating my Mom and Lara talked and talked and talked. The only part that was interesting to me was the computer downloading part and the actual end where I got to see my numbers.

After the appointment, I went to a sporting goods store and bought some basketball shoes. I missed the whole school day! It was pretty cool to be able to look at my sugar levels whenever I wanted. My Mom was more interested in my numbers than I was. She was kind of bugging me.

2 comments:

Shannon said...

You're awesome Tommy.

Hang in there. Moms are supposed to bug their kids :)

Sandra Miller said...

Tommy,

Thanks for being so candid here. Sharing your feelings about the Guardian is going to help a lot of other kids (and their parents).

And yes, Shannon is right-- we Moms do tend to bug our kids. I'm afraid it's just part of our job :-)