Murky

My twitter feed has been weird for the past couple of weeks.

I use Twitter to follow diabetes-related accounts and current events.

The tweets from the news accounts and politicians are usually easily distinguishable from those from diabetes organizations and bloggers. 'Earthquake rocks Italy' and 'Mayor jailed' fall into an obviously different bucket from 'Drowsy from a 3 juicebox night' and 'Just passed the 30 minute mark on hold with insurance co.'

I now have to take a closer look. Was the tweet about the cost of insulin a Bernie Sanders quote or was it from the American Diabetes Association? Will the link to the article on repealing the affordable care act take me to the New York Times or to a Blogger site? Is the anxious political tweet from a political commentator or from a person with diabetes afraid of losing her health insurance ?

It's getting very murky.

Exciting.

My twitter account exploded this afternoon.

People were sharing the news of the FDA approval of  Medtronic’s MiniMed 670G System, the first hybrid closed loop insulin delivery system.

Their shares of JDRF's tweet were accompanied by phrases including:

OMG I may start crying

This might be the best news I've ever heard

I'm over the moon

The exclamation points and happy emojis were innumerable.

I did tweet this, sans even one exclamation point:

 

It is, indeed, big news.  Somehow it's not hitting me, though, as BIG NEWS!!! 

 

I'm generally pretty even-keeled, so to be fair, my twitter feed will never feature countless exclamation points or party-themed emojis.  But I began to wonder what else was feeding my cautious optimism about this news.

 

Perhaps it hasn't sunk in properly yet. Perhaps it's because while approval came faster than some suspected it would, I knew it was on the way so was not completely surprised.  Perhaps it's because while it's a huge advancement, it's not the end goal as far as artificial pancreas products go.  Perhaps I'm considering the insurance environment we're currently in, making me worry that access is a potentially huge issue.  Perhaps I'm wondering how well it actually works. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy this has happened.  I'm happy that it looks like my kid will be wearing some kind of artificial pancreas system to college.  That's been my hope since it began to seem like a faint possibility. 

 

I'm happy that people will be acquiring these devices and living safer and healthier lives. 

 

I'm particularly happy that this product's approval will pave the way for greater innovation so that eventually my kid will be wearing a system that's mindless and completely foolproof. 

 

For right now, though, I'm just more 'excited' than I am 'EXCITED!!!'