Last month our theme was support and relationships. The theme for March’s Monday in Motion questions is technology.
This week’s question: What diabetes technology has helped you out the most?
Responses: There were two equally popular responses to this week’s question. Insulin pump was one of them. People noted that using an insulin pump allowed them greater overall diabetes control. As Steve noted, “The pump has completely change my life. After 29 years as a type 1 I have seen most of the new tech and this is amazing… The pump has made my quality of life and control exponentially better.” Equally dominant in the conversation was the combo of insulin pump and board.” Rounding off the responses were two other answers from people: the iBGstar meter and smartphone application, and Pat responded that a calculator had helped the most.
Virtue’s Take: So, I left that final response to the end on purpose. I’m not exactly sure if Pat was being facetious, but nevertheless I think it actually makes a good point: there are a lot of relatively simple technologies that we take for granted. For example, it really was not that long ago that there were no blood glucose meters, and the even first ones were much bigger, slower, and required a much larger blood samples than their current counterparts. Further, there are still many people who cannot access the most sophisticated diabetes technology, because the cost is just simply prohibitive.
I read through the responses first time and thought I agreed that my insulin pump has been the piece of technology that has helped me out the most. But, somehow Pat’s answer made me do a quick reconsider. I would say that my insulin pump has given me better quality of life, as I no longer have the frequent devastating lows of my multiple daily injection days. But if I had to choose the one piece of tech that I think has made the biggest impact on my ability to manage diabetes, it would actually be the ability have a meter that (a) has enough memory to remember a substantial number of test results and (b) can be linked to computer, so that I can downloaded and assesses those results in order to make changes where need be.
How about you? What piece of diabetes technology (big or small) has held the biggest impact for you?
