The Silver Lining

Sorry for the long silence.

There's so much to tell, but -- with the kids out of school for the summer -- so little time to tell it.

I'll do my darndest to post more as soon as I can.

In the meantime, here's something that happened just today...

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4:35 in the morning.

Bleary eyed, Ryan sits on the floor holding Joseph's pump.

And for just a few seconds, the only sounds in the room are our son's endearing snores-- and his pump's not-at-all endearing alarm.

"Call for service," Ryan says quietly, while squinting down at the pump's display. "I just pop out the battery, right?"

"And we've got to rewind and prime it," I remind him.

He disconnects the pump from Joseph's hip, then slowly gets up and leaves the room in search of a coin to unscrew the battery cap.

A moment later, he sits down next to me on the edge of the bed.

As Ryan pops the battery out, counts to three, then puts it back in-- I remember something.

"Wait a minute," I say, "we had one of these alarms not long ago. And the last time I called Animas about an alarm, they said we should be concerned if we see two or more in... I think they said 30 days. Let me look at the history."

Ryan hands me the pump.

I go to the main menu, push "History" and then "Alarm."

Two additional "Call for Service" alarms are there-- on May 1st and the 25th.

Damn.

I get back to the main menu, go to "prime/rewind," pull out the pump's cartridge, press rewind, and listen to the piston rod whir down...

A couple of minutes later, my still snoring son is reconnected to his insulin pump.

And I'm back in bed, unable to sleep.

At 8am, I'm on the phone.

Unfortunately -- because it's Sunday -- I get an answering service.

A woman tells me that someone will call back soon.

Sitting quietly on the couch -- the phone in one hand, Joseph's log book in the other -- I'm not even angry.

Just exhausted.

Five minutes after leaving a message, I'm calmly sharing our alarm history with an Animas support person.

She listens very carefully, takes down the error message numbers, and then asks:

"What is the serial number on Joseph's pump?"

I tell her.

"We'll get a replacement out to you first thing tomorrow morning-- oh, and what color is his pump?"

"It's black."

"Oh, I'm so sorry-- we always send replacements that are the same color as the original pump, but I'm afraid we're out of black in that model. We only have blue and silver."

"Really-- " I say, and without hesitating:

"We'll take the silver."

And then, I'm smiling.

Because -- despite the fact that we're about to receive our sixth pump in two and a half years -- Joseph is gonna be dang happy about this new silver one.