Lessons Earned
By Kimberly Ford Chisholm
In My Hot Little Hand
The News:
On Tuesday night, a mere four days ago, I got to hold an artificial pancreas.
What This Means for the T1D Community:
I knew Tom Brobson, JDRF research superstar, would be well-spoken and inspirational at Tuesday’s gathering.
What I didn’t know, was that Tom would bring along the cell-phone-like interface that he used last week in his artificial pancreas out-patient trial.
I had no idea, none, that it would be so moving to see–and play with!–the tool that will revolutionize the management of T1D for my son Will and for anyone else saddled with this sucky disease.
For three days last week, Tom and another patient with T1D took over a Virginia bed and breakfast with a team of endocrinologists and math whizzes and engineers who all stood by to witness the many ways in which the AP “worked beautifully.”
Those were Tom’s words: the thing “worked beautifully.”
As the small group of us crowded around, Tom showed us how neatly the Android touch screen showed a recorded version of last week’s continuous real-time blood glucose readings.
A snazzy pair of stoplight graphics on each side of the screen showed whether Tom’s levels were in the green–a good thing–or whether they were trending low or high, made obvious by the illumination of yellow then eventually red circles, either for glucose levels that were too high or too low.
As we watched last week’s numbers dropping, the excitement was palpable when Tom showed us how the device automatically (thanks to the math whizzes) knew to shut off insulin delivery, his number dipping only to 68 before flattening then rising again.
When the numbers trended slightly high, the machine knew to give micro-boluses then a slightly larger bolus (micro-boluses being more effective than basal insulin). We watched in wonder as the zippy-looking graph stopped rising at about 178 and dipped back down.
All without Tom doing anything!
I wasn’t remotely (ha!) prepared for how exciting this device would feel.
A new world of T1D management unfolded:
If Will were on the soccer field, or in bed at night, I would be able to watch his numbers rise and fall–within a nice tight healthy range!–without having to sneak into a darkened room to push the clunky buttons on his pump or wake him to calibrate the CGM he never wears.
If he were off at college, which will be the case soon enough, I could be confident that potentially fatal nighttime lows were a thing of the past.
My boy would have unprecedented control of his T1D.
I could stop worrying about kidney and heart and eye disease that feels like it might be a direct result of my, personally, not having uploaded enough meter data or not having insisted that my 15 year old use his Dexcom more often.
The artificial pancreas always seemed exciting. Seeing it in person was nothing short of extraordinary.
Five minutes with the device has me working all the harder this week to raise awareness and to advocate and to gather the money we need now more than ever.
So that everyone, not just Tom Brobson, gets to feel what it’s like for this thing to become reality.
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