Vanessa Beutler (20) is a farmer, a passionate animal caretaker, and wears her Kaleido pump in gold and black—on her arm, for everyone to see. A year ago, she would never have believed she’d be saying that today.
Living Life to the Fullest
Vanessa loves her job. The physical work, nature—and above all, her girls: the cows, who are her absolute passion. As a farmer, you’re outdoors, on the move, often for hours on end without a break. She needs a pump that keeps up with her and supports her in her day-to-day work. Not one she has to constantly tend to.
The Kaleido does exactly that. “The pump doesn’t care if I don’t look at it for four hours. It just keeps me going.” The pump sits on her arm, small, unobtrusive—and running. Sometimes she almost forgets it’s there.
Bringing Color to Life
What she won’t forget: the day she held the Kaleido in her hands for the first time. Gold and black. Smaller than anything she’d ever seen before. “For the first time in 10 years, I really felt like I wasn’t carrying anything at all. Like I was just free.”
Before that, Vanessa hid her pump wherever she could. No dresses in the summer. A jacket over the sensor—even when it was 30 degrees. Diabetes was something she wanted to keep at arm’s length, not something that was part of her. With the Kaleido, that’s all changed. People’s reactions are completely different now: no more strange looks, but rather, “Oh cool, what’s that?” The pump is no longer something to hide—it’s almost an accessory. “The gold pump is like a piece of jewelry to me, because I also wear a lot of gold jewelry.”
A Difficult Start
It wasn’t always like that. Vanessa was diagnosed at age ten, right in the middle of the transition to middle school. Shy, new to the class, and suddenly a condition that others saw but didn’t understand. The reactions of some of her classmates hurt, and Vanessa struggled to accept the condition as part of who she was.
As a little girl, she reached a point where she simply couldn’t wear the pump anymore. Her mother reacted immediately and took her to Dresden for a four-week rehab program. It helped, but puberty brought new hurdles. For years, Vanessa wore her pump hidden under jackets, hardly ever talked about it, and didn’t wear dresses. “Hiding it like that was also extremely exhausting.”
Fighting and winning
She discovered the Kaleido through a local diabetes support group. She knew right away: this is it. The Kaleido wasn’t yet known at her healthcare professional’s office, she was the first patient there to receive the pump. That didn’t deter her; on the contrary: together with her mother, she fought her way through applications and approval procedures for more than half a year. On February 1, she had the pump.
“You should listen to yourself and fight to manage your condition the way you want to. You should decide how your own life unfolds.”
Her advice
Vanessa speaks directly to everyone who’s stuck in a similar rut, those who just don’t want anything to do with diabetes anymore: “You can’t change the disease. But you can decide for yourself which path to take to make it as enjoyable as possible for yourself.”
And then she adds, with a conviction that makes you believe her immediately: “You can go on trips. Take a trip around the world. Anything. I believe I can really do anything. The world is my oyster.”