Bionic Woman

At every three-month endocrinology appointment, my doctor routinely asks if I have considered returning to insulin pump therapy. And I always politely say no.

I remain strongly anti-pump for a couple of reasons:

When I was on the insulin pump two years ago, it just did not work for me. For many people, it helps to improve diabetes control - but I didn't improve at all. Plus, the pump was a bigger hassle than it was worth - door knobs ripping out the tubing, scar tissue build up, allotting an hour of time to numb the injection site, irritating alarms beeping at three AM, disconnecting when showering, etc.

But, by far, my biggest turn off is how terribly conspicuous the insulin pump is. Illustrated by this picture of the continuous glucose monitoring system (the latest "improvement" in pump technology):



The smaller sensor checks your blood sugar every few minutes and relays the information to the pump, which responds accordingly - increasing or decreasing insulin.

It would be cool to, essentially, have an external pancreas that does most of the work for me...but I maintain that I will not go back on the insulin pump while it makes me look and feel like freakin' Bionic Woman.

One day, when the technology is perfected and the device is so discreet that only I can possibly know about it...I would love a sweet bionic pancreas.