Franca spends her shifts standing beside people who are running out of time. As a specialist nurse in oncology and palliative care, she accompanies patients through the hardest days of their lives – work that demands her full attention every single time. For most of her life, though, that full attention came with a constraint: since the age of three and a half, she has lived with type 1 diabetes. For just over two years now, that has changed. Franca wears Kaleido in blue and gold, running on the DBLG1 algorithm, and with it a kind of freedom she had stopped expecting.
A life of adjustments
Franca’s father also lives with type 1 diabetes, which is why her mother recognised the signs early – before Franca was even old enough to form her own memories of the diagnosis. She started on injections as a toddler, moved to her first pump at eight, and spent the years that followed doing what most people with a lifelong condition eventually learn to do: adjusting quietly and constantly, so that diabetes takes up as little space as possible.
Two years ago, she decided it was time for something new. Her tubed pump had aged and no longer suited her lifestyle, and she went looking for a replacement with two requirements that felt almost irreconcilable at the time. She wanted a true hybrid closed loop system, and sustainability mattered to her. “We all know how important the climate is,” she says.
Kaleido turned out to be the only system that met both requirements. Rechargeable. Hybrid closed loop. Wearable with tubing or as a patch, depending on the day. That last point mattered more than she had expected, because at the start she genuinely did not know which she would prefer. “It was a wonderful middle ground,” she says. “I have tubing, but I can tuck it into my pocket if it bothers me, or stick the patch straight on if I’d rather not have it.” These days she wears it as a patch 95% of the time – a preference she only discovered because she was never forced to choose blind. Kaleido won her over on sustainability too: the hardware is returned to the manufacturer after use and reused.
Relying on something else
A job like Franca’s demands a particular kind of vigilance, and for years half of it was directed inwards. “I simply can’t afford to have a hypo at work,” she says – not because it would be inconvenient, but because the people she cares for need her completely, every time. This is where Kaleido has changed things the most. “I trust the system completely,” she says. “Of course there are moments when I need to eat something, but then the system warns me.” The vigilance has not disappeared. She just no longer has to carry it entirely on her own.
One feature in particular has quietly become part of how she handles the moments that used to be hardest: Zen mode, which raises her glucose slightly so that a sudden hypo can’t catch her off guard in the middle of a meeting, mid-conversation, or on an evening when she would rather not think about it at all. “It takes away the situations I find difficult,” she says, “or it stops me from ending up in them in the first place.”
The freedom that shows up in small things
Franca swims 1,800 to 2,000 metres in most training sessions – not a casual lap or two, but long distance. With her old pump she went a full hour without insulin in the water, and she surfaced with high glucose every time. “With Kaleido, I don’t have that anymore.” She keeps the patch on throughout, briefly pauses closed loop mode while under water, and switches it back on once she is out and has showered. She only takes it off in the sea, in a lake, or in the sauna.
It shows up in smaller things too. Franca wears her blue and gold Kaleido directly on her arm: it is so small and light that she says she sometimes genuinely forgets it is there. She wears dresses to weddings again. She has taken Kaleido to festivals. “I don’t have to think about it anymore: will my clothes fit over it? Can I hide it somewhere? I just don’t have that anymore.”
What remains when the noise dies down
Since switching, her HbA1c has improved, and she notices highs and lows earlier than she used to. But it is the quieter change that she describes most vividly: “Half my brain used to be occupied with my diabetes all the time. I just don’t have that anymore.” For someone who has spent her whole life managing a condition that never fully switches off, reclaiming even half of her attention is no small thing. It is the most important thing.
Her advice to anyone considering a switch is as unpretentious as she is: “Feed the system as much information as possible at the beginning. You can have so much fun with the Kaleido pump.” And as for her, after years of feeling that diabetes had quietly taken something from her, piece by piece? “I feel safe,” she says. “I feel well looked after.”