I also brought an insulin pump to show you. You use this needle to inject the infusion set, and then you attach this cannula. You can see what's in here. There's a cartridge of insulin. If I'm going to eat something, I'll look to see what my blood sugar is. Okay, it's six. I put in my blood sugar level. How many carbs am I going to have? I'm going to have two pieces of toast, so I put in 30 carbs. Then it does the math and figures out how much insulin I need.
It's a fair amount of work, but this has saved my life multiple times. Not every person with diabetes needs this because they have signs and symptoms. The unawareness means that you simply go low and you have no symptoms, such as perspiring, headache, dizziness, mood changes, extreme fatigue or turning pale. You don't have any symptoms. I ran into Costco once to get some flowers and boom—I went low. I would love to have seen that videotape. I was walking around and I didn't expect to go low. I didn't have anything with me. I had my Costco card and my debit card. I needed food, right? They always hand out samples and someone gave me one. I opened it and it was a bar of soap. I was going to eat it, but I smelled it and thought, “Oh, God, I can't eat that.” You're so low your brain is shutting down. You can't ask for help. It's hard for others to imagine. I couldn't find the door because my brain was shutting down. I just kept walking around and around. You can have this right next to you but your brain has shut down and you don't even know you need to drink it. I finally found the way out, but I didn't know where my car was. Luckily a beep, beep did this. My car was full of food and juice and all sorts of things. I finally found it. I sat there, drank three juice boxes, ate some food and I was okay. You live like this.