Help Josie get the insulin pump she wants and needs

My name is Shawna and I’m trying to raise money to get my 12-year-old daughter, Josie, an insulin pump. Last October, we found out that she has type 1 diabetes by pure chance, as she was mostly asymptomatic. My sister had asked if she wanted her blood sugar tested, and she did, but when they tested it, it was reading over 500! Thankfully, we didn’t have to find out the way many families do when a child becomes very ill.

Since then, we’ve struggled to manage her blood sugar levels. It seems that during the day they go high, and at night they go too low. Sometimes I have to get up 3-4 times a night to give her fast-acting carbs to bring her blood sugar back up. When a patient is newly diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic and starts receiving treatment, sometimes their pancreas will start inefficiently working again. This is how lows happen. We are manually giving her insulin, but when the pancreas wants to help out with insulin, it causes too much insulin, resulting in sometimes dangerously low blood sugar levels. Doctors say this is called the “honeymoon phase” and that it’s always temporary. But sometimes it lasts for a couple of months, and other times it lasts for a few years.

We’ve also had a lot of struggles with insurance and getting insulin and diabetes supplies covered. We have a high-deductible healthcare plan because when we signed up for insurance last year, everyone had been relatively healthy up until that point. The individual deductible is $3000. Since we’ve already been spending so much on diabetes supplies, we are at slightly more than the halfway point to meeting it.

Insulin pumps significantly improve a person's A1Cs (average blood sugar over the past 3 months). The pump she wants is called the iLet Bionic Pancreas. It basically learns how to appropriately dose insulin throughout the day. When it predicts a low, it will stop pumping insulin until blood sugar levels are normal again. It doesn’t require carb counting and just makes everything much easier, resulting in improved A1Cs.

We completed all the steps that we were told we needed to complete to get a pump. The distributor called and said, “Good news! Your insurance covers the pump 100%,” and I thought, “That doesn’t seem right, but yay!” They proceeded to get me all hyped up about getting the pump and then said, “This pump is about $5000. You have a $3000 deductible, but once that deductible is met, it’s 100% covered by your insurance!” That was a punch in the gut. This was a few months ago, and I’ve been hoping that we would meet the deductible before the end of the year, but considering the year is more than halfway over and we are just barely past the halfway point, I’m not feeling hopeful. There will also be a short time when we lose the insurance, and I’ll have to find new insurance, and I’m not sure when exactly that will happen. I’d really like to have this expense taken care of before I have to worry about all of that.

And that’s what brings me here to GoFundMe. I’m kindly asking for help to get this pump while I still have insurance and will only have to pay $1450 instead of $5000. Any help is beyond appreciated. Even if you can’t donate, sharing this is also very helpful.