I Am Borg

After a few months of actively preparing for this, not to mention "10 years" of actively avoiding it… I have finally taken the plunge and have begun wearing an insulin pod. In fact, it's a great technology breakthru — an "OmniPod".
As you can see in the picture of me working on a deck-building team project barn raising style, the OmniPod is worn 24-hours a day, (mostly) externally, and usually in a somewhat concealed place. It does a miraculous job of the insulin delivery part of my diabetes management — all of it — so after 23 years I have no need to take insulin shots 4-5 times a day any more. (See also deck building SlideShow.)

Shown in the picture on the left is the pod itself, along with the brains of the operation — a wireless remote control for the pump — which give me access to a personalized diabetes management system, contains a detailed food library, and lets me make this device do everything a fully-functioning pancreas would do. (Well, not including glucose monitoring — for now, but see the The Charmr.) Not only is the end result of all this much simpler, leaving me with less constraints about my lifestyle, but it allows me to achieve much better control of my blood sugar so the long-term effects of diabetes are likely to be much less significant. For more, see my profile in the OmniPod Users group — part of the cyberspace Community for People Touched by Diabetes.

This is all great stuff, though I admit that realizing that I now wear "a computer" just as if it were part of me, that I will have to do so (in some form) for the rest of my life, and were I to stop wearing this that I would die… does leave me with the humble admission: "I Am Borg !!"    With such great results already, I've learned my lesson: Resistance is futile !