Dear Mike
Further to my conversation with Karen this afternoon I just wanted to mail you to say a huge thank you for changing our lives. Words cannot express how grateful we are to you for bringing this alarm to market.
13 years ago, when I was pregnant with my daughter Sophie, my partner Bryan died in a night hypo whilst he was in Germany on business. He was Type 1.
Three years ago, at the age of 9, Sophie was also diagnosed with Type 1. My world fell apart. I thought she too would die and so began the two hour testing throughout each and every night. For two years she was reasonably well and suffered only the occasional hypo but for the past year, since the onset of puberty and horrid hormones she has had real problems to maintain control. In March this year she was put onto an insulin pump. This has caused huge fluctuations and resulted in her being hospitalised three times since then. Recently we fought hard to receive funding from our PCT for sensors that work with the pump to alert the user to both low and high blood sugars. We were delighted to receive funding under the exceptional circumstances ruling as these sensors cost £37 per day, which would have been hard to fund privately. We were devastated on using them to find the alarm trilled quieter than a budgie with a sore throat and therefore, were completely useless. They wouldn't wake me, let alone Sophie in a hypo.
In last month's issue of Balance I saw an advertisement for your alarm. To be perfectly honest I didn't expect it to work for a moment but I thought we might as well give it a try. I couldn't believe it when on the very first night of use Sophie dropped to 2.8 and it sounded loud enough to wake me from the next room and her too. It has worked consistently ever since and I have now given up the 2 hourly checks. After three years of sleeping only a couple of hours a night and then permanently terrified I find it hard to tell you what it means to us.
I have told our PDSN about this watch and she has taken the details down to hand to all her patients and I am about to email everyone in our support group too.
You've changed our lives. Thank you.
Kind regards
Lisa
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