Graham Carter - the voice of age and experience

THIS week I am returning to a subject I’ve written about before - and not so very long ago - because our family has reached one of life’s landmarks.

Dinner was extra special for my daughter last Wednesday - because she didn’t have to inject herself with insulin after eating it.

It was the first time this had happened for nine years.

On every day of those last nine years, ever since she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, she has given herself four or five injections of insulin.

That’s one injection for every single meal or snack, often another to ‘correct’ her blood sugar levels, plus yet another, every night, of a longer-acting insulin that helped to regulate her blood sugar levels while she was asleep.

Although she hasn’t yet celebrated her 22nd birthday, she has given herself nearly 20,000 injections.

All that came to an end on Wednesday because she has switched from injecting herself to hooking herself up to what is known as an insulin pump - a very smart machine that uses mind-bloggling 21st century technology.

The pump itself is smaller than a mobile phone and connects to a cannula on the patient’s body, via a tiny tube.

By bluetooth, it ‘talks’ to another device (also smaller than a phone) that is both a blood sugar testing machine and a control unit.

Between them they calculate how much insulin is required, and when, then dispense it all day and all night.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the technology is the accuracy of the pump.

Diabetics need about a spoonful of insulin a day to survive, spread across the day, so every three minutes the pump dispenses an ant-sized portion.

Each pump costs the NHS £3,000, which sounds a lot, but is cheap when you consider what it achieves.

Even aside from boosting the patient’s quality of life, which is priceless, it improves his or her control of their condition, thus preventing serious complications which could add up to many thousands of pounds’ worth of treatment.

My daughter had to attend a class in which each patient was taught everything they needed to know about their new machine, and they were allowed to take somebody along to help them understand it, because there was a lot to take in.

The other two patients, who were older, each attended on their own, and at her age my daughter didn’t really need her dad to be there, but she asked me along, so I obliged.

And I was really glad that I did.

When she was diagnosed, all those years ago, it fell to me to break the news to her, and in the short time I had to choose my words, I decided to tell her it wasn’t a disaster, but it was a big challenge.

I didn’t say whose.

Children’s health issues are obviously a challenge for the patients themselves, but they also present parents with their own challenges.

When you are on the battlefield together and score a victory, it brings the whole family closer together, like nothing else can, and gives you all the strength you need to keep fighting.

Insulin pumps are not a cure for diabetes, so the war goes on.

And last Wednesday provided the perfect demonstration of how your kids are always your kids, even when they are kids no longer.