Introduction to Insulin Devices For Kids

When you or your child is living with diabetes, you are always on the lookout for the best insulin devices for kids. Most people start out by using basic insulin syringes, but a lot of them eventually move on to diabetic pens or insulin pumps to administer their insulin. All of these have their advantages and disadvantages. When my son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes we were taught in the hospital how to draw insulin into a needle and give him the insulin with a syringe. About a year later we were given a NovoPen Junior diabetic pen and have tried that for a while. We have not moved to a pump yet, but we will be considering that down the road.

The most basic way to administer insulin is with a syringe. It is very simple to do and does not require much training. You determine the amount of insulin you will need, draw that much air into the syringe, stick the syringe into the insulin vial, and draw the amount of insulin required for that particular does. You then pinch the skin and give the shot. There isn't much to it.

What I like about the syringe is that you can visually see how much insulin is going into the body. You can feel confident that you or your child is getting the necessary insulin. After you use other methods for a while you get confident with them, but it can be reassuring to have control over the dosage.

What I don't like about syringes is that they take up a lot of space. Plus all of the equipment that is required can seem like a burden. Also, there are those pesky air bubbles that get in the way.

Diabetic pens are a different take on the syringe. A diabetic pen is similar in that you are still manually administering the insulin, but you do not draw the insulin into a needle. An insulin cartridge is inserted into the pen, and a disposable needle is secured on top. The pen has a dial that shows the amount of insulin that will be inserted into the body. You the insert the needle and press a button. It takes a bit to learn how to use a diabetic pen but you can easily overcome it.

Our family uses the NovoPen Junior. It is not a perfect tool but it does work pretty well. It tends to continue to drip insulin after being removed from the skin, which has given us pause. What we do like is that with one prescription you get 5-300 unit pen cartridges. Since our little boy is so small, this works out to a 5 months supply for just one copay. Compare this to getting 2-1000 unit vials when we were using syringes. We were getting more insulin in total, but we were trashing more than half of each vial every month. The cartridges save us 2.5 copays.

Although we haven't been totally happy with the NovoPen Junior, we can still use the cartridges with syringes. The only thing about doing this is that once you insert a syringe into the cartridge you cannot use the pen with that cartridge since the syringe will throw off the cartridge.

The other insulin device for kids is an insulin pump. My family has not moved on to an insulin pump, so I do not have much experience with them. The reason we have not moved on is that my son just turned 4 years old so we are not ready to move to that, if we ever do. I have heard of some people that love the insulin pump and some that do not. So far, we are happy with the other methods so we will stick to them until a later date when we will think about the pump.

I think the most important thing is to use whatever makes you the most comfortable. When it comes to life with diabetes, that is just a good rule of thumb in general. Take advice, but do what you feel keeps you or your child the most safe. No one knows how the body will react better than you do. All of these insulin devices for kids will work, but use what makes you sleep better at night.