A pump is not like a yo-yo. If you drop it to the ground it won't come back.

Repeated attempts will pull on the infusion needle and irritate the skin until a bright red drop of blood loops up and around the tube like a cursive letter "e."

Having diabetes since he was just 22 months has programmed Charlie to accept it without question. In his toddler years he went through the motions of testing as routinely as one puts on shoes to go outside or brushes teeth. OK, bad example with brushing teeth. Even while he was fast asleep, he would give us his finger to be pricked - a Pavlovian response to the light going on in the darkness night after night after night. Eyes closed. Snoring. Kinda creepy.

Susanne and I dreaded the day when Charlie would realize that this disease sucks. That not every kid has every single morsel of food they eat counted and measured and often determined by a small medical device that speaks in numbers. That most kids don't need to give blood in exchange for food. That most kids don't have to be tortured with site changes every three days or have hard, plastic machinery attached to their body. When would the light bulb switch on over his head? When would he say, in his own way, that this is bullshit!

That time is now. After years of saying nothing about diabetes, Charlie suddenly wants answers.

"Am I going to have diabetes my whole life?" he asked my wife the other day.

Charlie wasn't trying to send the pump spinning back up like a yo-yo.

He was hoping the gravity of the pump would pull the infusion set right out of his skin. Charlie is just beginning to understand the gravity.

"I don't like having a site and I don't like diabetes."