Monday night was Halloween. It was also the night that a fiber optic line was cut about 90 miles from where we live, knocking out cell towers and therefore cell service all over northwestern Colorado. Not a big deal, right? Wrong. I found out that night how dependent we really are on technology.
Our town has a wonderful tradition of trick-or-treating in our “downtown.” It’s a typical western town with a wide “main” street and store fronts. For two hours on the evening of Halloween, kids and families stroll up and down the street while merchants hand out candy. It really is a fun and quaint tradition.
This year my husband and I decided that our kids were old enough to trick-or-treat with their friends, so once they were all squared away and off to collect candy, we went to a restaurant and hung out with friends. About an hour and a half later our friend went and retrieved the boys, but came back without our girl. My husband went out to look for her, but came back alone. After a few more laps (by this time all the businesses were closed and the street had been reopened to through traffic), we finally found her in a restaurant with her friends and one of their dads. If only we had had cell service, we could have avoided a lot of stress and worry.
This experience made me think about how much technology does for us in terms of diabetes. Without technology we really are in the dark. Without blood glucose meters we have no guide for how much insulin to take or food to eat. Without computers we can’t download our results and see patterns and make adjustments. For those whose lives have been changed due to CGM (continuous glucose monitoring), it would be hard to imagine not seeing your “number” at any moment of the day.
And then there’s the insulin pump, the treadmill or elliptical, the iPod you wear when you’re exercising. What about the computer you use to read the blog posts on the DOC? Diabetes would be a completely different experience without technology, and I, for one, wouldn’t want to go back to living in the dark.