2 Year Old Hannah's Story

My name is Jennifer. I'm the mother of an adorable little girl named Hannah. Hannah was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes March 5th 1997. At admission her BS was close to 1000. We were so shocked, it felt as if our world was falling apart. After all as a parent you always try to make things better for your kids when they are sick and we could not make this go away. In May 97 our pediatrician referred us on to St.Louis Childrens. While at our first clinic visit Hannah had a severe low (17). We had to give her the glucagon to bring her out of it, she was then admitted for 2 days. For the next 5 months we tried all kinds of regimens and all the insulins available but nothing seemed to help.

After seeing our frustration our endo. doctor suggested the pump. They had one other toddler on it and he was doing well. We started looking into it. I was real scared, but I had to see if it would help. Hannah was admitted Nov 4th 97 and spent 2 days in the hospital. She did real well, doesn't mess the pump or anything. She is a real trooper. The set we use is the bent needle and it goes into her upper front leg. We also use Humalog in it. We love it. Her A1C came down to 9.3 from 11.1 in only 1 month.

The pump has been a blessing but it is not a cure. I'm sure most if not all will agree that more federal funding is needed to find that cure so many of us are waiting for.

Please if you have not already done so, write to your congress person and tell them you support more funding for diabetes research. It needs to be top priority.

Thanks For Listening,

Jennifer

If anyone would like to talk my E- Mail address is gregfeld@macomb.com.