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My husband just switched jobs, which is always a headache when it comes to health insurance. If you are lucky enough to be allowed to start right away, with no waiting period, there's still that period of limbo when the old insurance has been cancelled (and man, they don't waste any time doing that) and when your new insurance is in the system.

Of course, Olivia needed insulin while we were in limbo. I went to CVS to pick it up and it was going to cost $335.99 for three bottles of insulin. Needless to say, we can't afford that.

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It sounded like the ideal situation. One phone call and all my diabeetus testing supplies and medicine would be delivered straight to my door. No last minute trips the the pharmacy. No paying out of pocket to be reimbursed later. Everything would be taken care of with one quick phone call.

I fell for it in September. Like most relationships, it started out nicely. Three or four "quick" phone calls and they promptly delivered a three month supply of test strips and an equal number of lancets. And for a girl who only changes her lancets when we change the clocks (and only if I remember to that week), I now have a 600 year supply of lancets in my closet.

At the time, they were also supposed to send a three month supply of insulin. It still has not arrived. Five or six phone calls later, they tell me they are still waiting on my doctor to return their call.

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The one thing that I'm truly exhausted with regarding my health lately are the details of having one chronic illness on top of a slew of hormonal issues. The bills, the prescriptions, the actual supplies...I'm tired of dealing with them all. I'm running out of room in both my actual living space and in my life.

Throughout the month, I spend quite a large amount of time and money organizing and ordering supplies. Sometimes it's insulin prescriptions, vitamins and supplements, and sometimes it's all the hormones that keep changing on my endless list of pills to take. No matter what it is, it gets thrown into the mix of everything else going on with me, which sometimes means that things slip by or end up in disarray.

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I feel like I'm in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.

OK first let me say that I really don't like feeling like this. If I could ban SpongeBob from my house I would. When I'm surfing the channels for the kids (man is it hard to please a 9 year old, 6 year old and 3 year old at the same time!) I have to force myself to not scream "Over my dead body!" when they all scream/chant "SpongeBob! SpongeBob! SpongeBob!"

I get that we all need a little mindless entertainment at times (which is why I often choose solitaire over a game of hearts with the computer because solitaire takes fewer brain cells) but my God I just want to poke SpongeBob in the eye. And Patrick.

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Non-invasive blood sugar testing and insulin delivery. Perfecting it will be the Holy Grail for many biotech companies in the next decade as they attempt to take needles out of the equation for people with diabetes.

In 2010 and beyond, companies like Melbourne-based Phosphagenics will compete with others to see who can produce the most non-invasive product possible. Phosphagenics is banking on its insulin patch – a patch that would deliver a basal level of insulin through the skin and into the blood stream. Who knows what’s on the horizon. Scientists may one day learn to measure blood sugar by the methane emitted in farts.

A potential crown jewel of advancement for children with diabetes. Especially mine who seemingly has an endless supply.

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Last week, I started a blog entry:

An Internal Battle
 
Why do I want a CGMS? Right now, I'm not so sure. There have been numerous points in the last year where I've said how much better my quality of life would be if I had some more diabetes technology. There have been other points this year when I've said, you know I'm not sure my return on investment here is worth it.

I had intended to work on that entry over the weekend, but couldn’t find the words past this paragraph. One day last week I had really considered calling the medical-supply company I’m working with to get the DexCom to tell them to just forget it. And pretty quickly I decided not to, to allow myself to have access to the best technology to treat my disease. I decided to just let it go and see what happens.

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There is a box sitting in my mud room from Medtronic. It’s a box that contains something really exciting and slightly terrifying. Charlie has seen the box and its contents. He’s seen the size of the needle and he wants to go ahead with it anyway. He asks me every day if I’ve called to set up some sort of training in how to hook this baby up.

There have been too many times in the past six months when we shook our heads in frustration and said "we can’t go on like this." Too many times when we’ve said, "something needs to change."

So, now there’s a box in the mud room.

I wonder if the restrictions are easing now that insurance companies are seeing how beneficial continuous glucose monitoring can be. I remember reading in the blogosphere not too long ago about the flaming hoops that needed to be jumped through in order to get coverage.

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First, let me tell you that I used my very last sensor in February, and didn't even get a full life out of it. I decided to try to different spot on my belly and it wound up being a crap spot because the readings would come in sketchy and after about twoish days I realized most of the adhesive had come off. So I begrudgingly yanked it.

But I was in the midst of fighting my insurance company for coverage of my sensors and I was certain that the situation would be resolved soon and that it wouldn't be long until I had replacement sensors. And then one day, like magic, I got word that the sensors were covered. It was like an enormous weight was gone.

I quickly took care of the other weight on my shoulders: paying my deductible from the last batch of pump supplies I received. Medtronic said I only needed to pay it in full before I ordered supplies again so I was taking my time.

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Jumping into the world of pumping is no simple task. And I don’t mean that it is hard to get an insulin pump. The hard part is picking through the available pump companies, deciding which one suits your lifestyle, and finding a way to pay for it. If you live in Duckburg and own a bank vault full of coins, you can pay the thousands of dollars for up-front costs and hundreds monthly for a pump. But for the rest of us, health insurance is the only avenue to an insulin pump.

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