My Journey With Type 1 Diabetes : Pump Break

December 8 2014...a day I shall always remember. It wasn't the day of my diagnosis or anything...it was the day I finally started on an insulin pump. I was super excited to go from having to take 6 shots a day to changing a needle placed in my abdomen every three days. Despite the flexibility and better control it offers a year later and it was time for me to have a pumpcation...a fancy word for a pump vacation.

Personally I believe it's needed for me to get disconnected from my pump and go back to shots for anywhere from a day to a month. There are quite a couple reasons why I need these vacations which I'm sure many individuals with diabetes can relate too.

1) Attachment Break

Although the pump has many benefits having something attached to you 24/7 can get frustrating at times. The only times I detached from my pump was during swimming or a shower and that was for short periods of time. When I first went back to insulin shots it felt weird because I always felt like I left something behind at home. When I went to the gym I would always panic thinking I left my pump at home and that I was getting no insulin in me.

2) Old School

A pump is basically my life saver of embarrassment because it does all the math for me. All I need to do is push a couple buttons and it figures out how much insulin I need to correct my blood sugar if it's high and how much insulin I need for my carb intake. Going of a pump for sometime allows me to refresh all the old school fashion diabetes ways that they taught me upon diagnosis, this can be useful incase my pump decides to malfunction than I know how to do the basics of diabetes.

3) CGM break

Since my CGM connects to my pump, having a pump break also meant having a CGM break. This can be beneficial if I was off the sensor for a long period (over 2 months) which I was not. Being off the sensor allows you to be in-touch with your body more in the sense of feeling your low and high blood sugars. My experience with this though wasn't successful for a couple reasons: firstly the longest I've been off the pump was 3 weeks. Secondly I feared having lows since I can't feel them that I let my bgs run higher than I usually like them to be. Being off the sensor also made me have to wake up every night at 3am to check my bloodsugar to insure it was in good range.

4) Carb Break

This is a bit more of a personal reason that very few can relate too. With my pump gives me the option of seeing my carb intake which became an obsession with me. I ended up insuring that my carb intake was no more than 40g a day so going on a pump break made me relax a bit from obsessing over my carbs as I didn't track them therefore, not knowing how much I ate in a day.

5) Special Occasions

Life is an adventure full of events. On special events like graduation, prom, weddings...etc where I will where a dress and be all fancy or even beach days I detach my pump and go back to shots just for the day. This gives me a peace of mind as I don't have to worry where I will put my pump

Overall, a pump break has it pros and cons but I believe it is needed. Definitely one of the disadvantages is having to record my blood sugar numbers something my pump and meter did automatically.

A couple things I noticed is when switching from pump to shots and back to pump something my team and I noticed were that my numbers were drastically lower during the first 2-3 days of switching. After my 3 days my insulin dosages went back to normal. Switching to shots though needed more adjusting in order to prevent highs.