Diabetes Pump Tattoo

Photo: Stephane Gilbert/The Gazette

Five-year-old Jacob was born with Type 1 Diabetes and needed a diabetes pump to survive. But as none of his classmates had one, he felt different and lonely, so mom and dad did something special:

"It broke my heart," [Jacob's mom Camille] Boivin recalled. She told him that all children have their differences, some wear glasses, others have braces or wheelchairs. There was one other adolescent in their region with a pump but no one his age.

While Boivin and Aumond couldn't get real insulin pumps, they figured an ink version would help assuage their son's solitude.

It had to be aesthetic and look like the real thing, Boivin said, so the couple searched on the Internet for an artist and found Bruno Oeuvray in Joliette.

"Jacob was thrilled. It was magical to see his eyes," Boivin said, her voice wavering with emotion. "Even today I have tears in my eyes."

Aumond's tattoo has a barbed wire string where the catheter would be attached to the pump, a visual reminder of painful injections and "having to pierce the skin several times of day for a drop of blood" that the condition imposes on patients. Boivin's tattoo catheter trails to her back where it transforms into an almond-tree branch with pink flowers.

"It's a symbol of hope for a cure one day," Boivin said of the almond blooms.

Charlie Fidelman of The Montreal Gazette has the story: Link | Camille Boivin's blog