Who’s that man on my mySentry?

In the upper left hand corner of the monitor, to the left of the battery status icon, is a set of initials and a cartoon character.

As you can see, I need to change my battery.

But what’s up with the cartoon dude? Apparently, that’s myAvatar. mySentry comes pre-programed with about a dozen or so to choose from: some chicks, some dudes; of varying skin tones. I chose this guy ’cause he has long hair, a hint of a beard, and his skin and hair color match mine (if you subtract all the grey, which is really starting to dominate the scene over this last month). To be honest, none of them looked much like me or like my self-image.

Oh, and that’s my initials above my Avatar.

Why would you need your initials and an Avatar on your own monitor? Well, remember, it wasn’t really built to be your monitor. It’s built to be your mother’s. And what if your poor mother had not one, but two, kids with diabetes?

It happens.

The Avatars are a quick way for Mom to tell if it’s Jack’s pump signaling a nocturnal low, or Jill’s. That’s right, each mySentry will only report on one pump (but I’m thinking if your pockets were deep enough, you might be able to hook multiple Outposts and multiple Sentries into one single pump). But anyway, if you have more than one type 1 kiddo, you might have more than one Sentry monitor on your nightstand. You might also need a larger nightstand. And probably a Valium prescription. But that’s a discussion for another day.

The Avatars are a quick way to recognize who’s pump the monitor is reporting on. I don’t know what you’d do if you have twins, wouldn’t the Avatars be the same? Seriously, I guess this is as good a way as any to differentiate between a pair of pumpers.

I remember that the CoZmo pumps had a place where you could enter the name of the pump. My last one was named Custer. My first one had a Borg name. Anyway, the thinking at CoZmo was that if you named it you’d treat it better. Like a pet of sorts. Made sense to me. So perhaps letting the little ones choose their Avatars helps gets them engaged in some way with the new gear.

So the guy on mySentry isn’t the night watchman. He’s me.