I feel like I’ve failed as a diabetic.
That is the thought I’ve been sitting with as I prepare to move from my DIY looping system with AndroidAPS and the Dana RS to a commercial hybrid closed-loop system using CamAPS FX and the YpsoPump.
Logically, I know that changing diabetes technology is not a failure. I know that choosing a system my diabetes team can support me with is sensible. I know that our needs change and that the “best” diabetes technology is the technology that works for us in the season we are actually living through.
Emotionally, it has been a little more complicated than that.
I started looping with AndroidAPS, usually shortened to AAPS, and the Dana RS in 2020. Getting started was not as simple as downloading an app and connecting my insulin pump. I had to build the app from scratch, work through all the necessary objectives and then slowly configure the system around my own insulin needs.
There were settings to understand, tiny adjustments to make and a lot of trial and error. It required time, patience and more diabetes maths than I care to remember. It was a huge learning curve but I put in the work because I could see what the system might give me in return.
And once I had everything working well, it gave me something pretty incredible. For the most part, diabetes could run more quietly in the background.
I want to be careful with that wording because no diabetes technology makes living with type one diabetes easy. A loop cannot count the carbohydrates for you, predict every hormone, understand illness, remove the mental load or stop diabetes from being diabetes. There are still decisions, alarms, site changes, stubborn highs and lows that make absolutely no sense. But AAPS took some of that relentless work off my shoulders. My HbA1c reached the non-diabetic range, my time in range was honestly ridiculous and for a long time, it felt as though I had found a system that truly understood my body.
I felt like I had cracked the diabetes code… as much as anyone can ever “crack” something as unpredictable as diabetes.
Then my body and my life changed
Over the past couple of years, everything has changed. I lost a significant amount of weight. I became really unwell. I went through five operations in two years and lost two organs along the way. My routines changed, my activity changed and my insulin needs changed.
And diabetes does not exactly thrive on unpredictability.
The settings I had carefully built and refined no longer seemed to fit my body. The system that had once worked almost seamlessly in the background suddenly had me staring at my blood sugars and wondering, what the actual hell was going on.
I knew AAPS was only as good as the settings and information I gave it. I also knew that, in theory, I could work through everything again. I could analyse the patterns, change the ratios, adjust the sensitivity settings and keep tweaking until I found the answer. But knowing something is technically possible and having the capacity to do it are two very different things. Trying to untangle my diabetes while I was already physically unwell, recovering from repeated surgeries and carrying the emotional weight of everything that had happened was simply beyond what I could manage.
The severe hypos that changed everything
Then I experienced not one, but two hypoglycaemic seizures while abroad. They were terrifying!
I had spent almost 30 years living with type one diabetes without anything like that happening to me, and suddenly it happened twice. It shook me to my core and changed the way I felt about my own safety. Afterwards, diabetes became much louder again. Every downward arrow carried more weight. Every walk came with the worry that I might drop. Blood sugar swings made me question my settings and my decisions and the fear of another severe hypo began creeping into every activity, leaving the house and everyday life.
It was not only hypo anxiety. Diabetes in general started making me anxious. Something that had, for the most part, been ticking along in the background was demanding my attention again and I no longer trusted myself to know how to fix it.
Then,I had a brief, completely unplanned conversation with my diabetes nurse. For a bit of background, my diabetes team have largely left me to manage things myself over the years. They knew I used a DIY looping system, but understandably did not have the expertise to configure or troubleshoot it for me. That independence once suited me. I had learned how the system worked, I understood my settings and I was achieving results I was incredibly proud of.
But independence can become isolation without you really noticing. During that conversation, my nurse said, “Let me help you.”
And I cried.
It was such a simple sentence, but I think it was the moment I realised how alone I had felt not only with diabetes, but throughout all my health struggles over the past couple of years. I had spent so long trying to research, calculate, adjust, cope and hold everything together by myself that I had not realised how badly I needed someone else to help carry some of it.
Why I’m moving to CamAPS FX and the YpsoPump
My nurse explained that I could move to a commercial looping system that my diabetes team would be able to actively support me with. The system may not offer the same level of flexibility or customisation as AndroidAPS. I know there will be things I miss and that handing over some of that control may feel strange after so many years of managing it myself. But it will give me something I need much more right now: support.
So I’m starting on the YpsoPump with CamAPS FX.
I know lots of diabuddies love this combination and I am hopeful it will help me feel safer and more supported while I find my feet again. I am also nervous. It is a completely new pump, a different algorithm and a significant change after relying on the same system for so long. And simply, I HATE change!
This is not me saying that commercial looping is better than DIY looping, or that the YpsoPump and CamAPS FX will be the right choice for everyone. Diabetes technology is incredibly personal. What feels freeing to one person can feel restrictive to another, and what works beautifully during one chapter of our lives may no longer meet our needs in the next. This is simply the choice that feels right for me now.
Asking for help is not failing
Part of me still feels like I should have been able to work it all out. I managed my DIY loop successfully for years. I learned the system, made the adjustments and achieved results that once felt impossible. Moving away from it has sometimes felt like admitting I could not cope, or as though I am taking a step backwards.
But after almost seven years of managing it largely by myself including through some of the hardest seasons of my life, I am trying to see this decision differently.
There is a lot of praise within diabetes spaces for doing more yourself: learning the technology, analysing the data, mastering the settings and achieving the numbers. Those things can be empowering, but they can also quietly make us believe that needing support means we are somehow less capable.
It does not.
Sometimes the bravest and most sensible thing we can do is admit that the way we have been managing is no longer working for the life we are living now. I do not know yet exactly how I will get on with CamAPS FX and the YpsoPump. I expect there will be a learning curve, things I love and things that frustrate me. I will share the transition honestly as I go.
For now, I am holding on to this: changing systems does not erase everything I learned or achieved with AndroidAPS. It does not mean I was not good enough to make DIY looping work. It means I have finally recognised that I cannot, and should'nt have to, do all of this alone.
