The Power Of Love

Sometimes things happen and one event ends up changing your life and the life of others forever. I’ve found through everything that the love for our children can give us the power to do anything! 

The creation of Pump Wire represents the love we feel for our daughter, two son and the many other children who suffer from Juvenile Diabetes (Type 1) and the hope that these children will live a fun care free childhood but still be able to enjoy the benefit of insulin pump therapy. Here’s our story:

Our daughter Nikki Tyler DeFruscio was diagnosed on June 19, 2000 with Juvenile Diabetes. Like so many other families this was the day that our lives and the lives of our family changed forever. 

We became a family that counts every carb, measures all of Nikki’s food and constantly tried to predict when the insulin would peak and how much food Nikki should be eating. We also were dealing with the very unpredictability of a two and a half year old little girl Nikki Tyler. One minute she would want to eat and the next she would refuse to eat. We were on an emotional roller coaster with no end in site. 

I would become very frustrated when Nikki’s HA1C’s would go up rather than down and would take her numbers as a personal reflection on our ability to control her diabetes. Grasping for support, I started to attend our local support group meetings along with gathering as much information about diabetes and what was out there that could help us. We discovered that many children in the ten to twelve age group were using insulin pumps. The parents I knew were reporting better numbers and greater flexibility in their lives. So when I took Nikki to her next doctor’s visit I inquired about the insulin pump.  At that time the doctor we were seeing would only put older children on the pump. Everything I read and everything I was told lead me and my husband to believe that we could gain better control with Nikki on an insulin pump. Why should we have to wait until she was ten years old? For us that would be seven years away. Seven years of this emotional roller coaster. Seven years of blaming ourselves because we just could not bring the numbers under control. After a lot of thought, investigating and consulting with other parents we decided to switch doctors.