Heather and I have adapted our lives to the pandi. The camping trips we had planned around festivals were canceled and our other trips were reviewed for rona guidelines. Once we cleaned up our calendar we filled in the weekends with pandi approved rona minimizing trips. What we came up with was to focus our camping trips on water based activities. To keep us from getting rona we realized that renting a kayak was deemed too risky so we looked into purchasing one. We are two peas in a pod and love doing things together so a tandem kayak was definitely our focus. The only problem with either buying a couple of kayaks or one tandem kayak is the amount of garage space they would occupy. We found a great deal on a used tandem kayak and almost purchased it until I thought to measure the garage to see if it could fit. Of course we found out that loading, unloading, storing, and transporting a kayak or two kayaks was going to be too much so we almost gave up. Then we came across these blowup kayaks and at first we thought of them as for kids and for use in a pool. The more we researched the more we figured that a blowup kayak was adult friendly, cost effective, and easy to store. There are downsides to having a blow up kayak compared to a regular hard shell kayak. The blow up kayaks are not built for speed so there is a "right" speed to go when traveling and anything faster just wastes energy and it becomes a hassle to steer. Then they get a little uncomfortable after about two hours. Then you start to get a little antsy in the seat, which then brings us to the last part and they are a little more unstable getting in and out of.
The end result works perfectly for us because we set reasonable expectations, did the research, and looked at solutions that filled as many "must have" items in a nonbiased approach. We knew that this hobby might be just a fad for us so spending alot of money and storing something we rarely used was a big factor. So how does this relate to all of you and your type 1 juvenile sugar diabetes? When looking at how each of us manage our type 1 juvenile sugar diabetes we should all do a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis on ourselves to understand who we are. Then look at what options are available to you weather it be a bionic smart insulin pump, a regular insulin pump, a tubeless insulin pump, or multiple daily injections. I personally know that technology is a weakness of mine and that I camp alot so a futuristic bionic smart insulin pump would be a threat away from civilization. The tubeless insulin pumps hit my weakness of being a klutz and I knock them off all the time. The regular insulin pumps are a threat to me because I am forgetful so making sure I have plenty of insulin in the reservoir is another weakness. My strength is my routine and taking a shot of long term insulin twice a day works on my strength. Then I love the shock and awe of pulling out my insulin at a restaurant and being the center of attention while injecting myself with insulin so daily injections isn't perfect by no means but it is the best compromise for my SWOT analysis. I have been on all sorts of insulin pump therapies and the good thing is to always keep an open eye and understand if something isn't working for you then it might be time to analyze and maybe try something different. So never criticize or demoralize anyone for how they are controlling their type 1 juvenile sugar diabetes. Remember that your life and SWOT is different than everyone else life and SWOT so don't look down on MDI people like myself, instead understand that type 1 juvenile sugar diabetes is all about making the right compromises to live a happy and fulfilled life and always be open to understanding why other type 1 juvenile sugar diabetes therapy cultures do things the way the do.
