LIVINGLIVING
Meet superhero
Captain Lantus,
a character
imagined by sixyear-old
Max
Rapson who wanted to support young
children and parents considering pump
therapy.
Gary and Sarah Rapson's son Max
was diagnosed with Type I diabetes when
he was just 18 months old. Now seven,
Max has been on a Medtronic 640G insulin
pump for nearly four years, augmented
with a Medtronic CGM sensor.
According to his father, "This pump
has been a game changer. We felt we
could not adequately control his diabetes
with multiple daily injections (MDI). He is
due for a pump upgrade and will progress
onto Medtronic's 780G augmented hybrid
closed loop system. When Max was first
diagnosed myself and my wife took turns
- one of us would wake up on the hour,
every hour, through the night to check on
him. Obviously back then we had to look
after all aspects of his care, but now he's
started to do a lot of it himself. Having said
that, we've noticed that on a Saturday his
pump alarm will go off and he'll wait for us
to come in and turn it off - he just yells out,
'My pump's going off, my pump's off!'"
Going back to the beginning, Gary
Rapson recalls, "When he was still a baby,
we'd noticed he'd been wanting to drink a
lot, and was going to the loo a lot. He had
ridiculously soggy nappies all the time.
When we took into the doctor. He did ask
does anyone in the family have diabetes?
MY DIABETES KIT
MAX RAPSON
Max Rapson with his dad, Gary, and the book they have
produced featuring superhero Captain Lantus.