My 5 year old daughter Bella loves horses, she loves
to draw, especially fairies and she just learned to ride her bright pink
and purple bicycle without training wheels. She has long blonde curly
hair that catches everyone's attention and she has enough "sass" to make
even a stranger shake their head and hide a smile. My daughter Bella
was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in February. This means that her body
cannot make the insulin that it needs to turn her food into energy for
her body. Her father and I must give her insulin injections, shots,
multiple times a day. In the 6 months since Bella was diagnosed she has
had over 550 injections. Thankfully, she now has an insulin pump that
administers her insulin, instead of shots she only has to change her
infusion site every three days. It has been a godsend! However, we must
still check her blood sugar 8-12 times per day. This means pricking her
tiny little finger tips with a needle and squeezing blood out to apply
to a test strip. These readings let us know if her blood sugar is high
or low, how much insulin to give her, or if she needs juice or food or
worse, an emergency injection called Glucagon to raise her blood sugar.
Just like the pump made administering her insulin easier on her, and so
much more effective as well- There is a device called a Continuous
Glucose Monitor. This "CGM" has a fiber-optic sensor that sticks under
her skin and stays in place for a week. The sensor takes a reading of
her blood sugar every few second sand every 5 minutes it displays the
average. Not only does the CGM give us the real time reading but it
plots these readings out so that we can see if her sugar is rising or
falling quickly, allowing us to catch any dangerous lows and stop
dangerously high blood sugars. However, her insurance will not cover it.
It's not a required item, even though it is considered the standard of
care in the diabetes community. A CGM costs almost $1600 and the monthly
supplies average about $300. This is beyond what our family can afford.
Thankfully, we have wonderful friends. We have friends who are going
above and beyond, creating fundraisers to help raise the money to
purchase Bella what she needs, what we need to keep her tiny little body
as healthy as we can.
I dont know how to make it click-able... but here it is!
https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/f303/bellacgmfund
