I am hooked up to a microelectronic device 24 hours a day and I love it. I hope to remain hooked up to this device, or a more advanced version of it, for the rest of my life.

Unless a cure is found for diabetes, that is.

The device I'm attached to is called an insulin infusion pump, and chances are you have no use for it yourself. It's about the size of a beeper and if you saw it you'd probably think that's what it was -- until you noticed the tubing that connects it to a cannula (a flexible plastic tube) inserted into my abdomen.

Now you're thinking, "Cool!" unless you're thinking, "Ewww!" Or maybe you're thinking both at once. Frankly, I relish these reactions. If you're into nifty gadgets, no matter what they're used for, then you probably won't mind if I proudly demo my new insulin pump to you. If you're grossed out, then I get to feel smug about my blasé attitude toward needles and cannulae and the permeability of my body.

Not everybody carries around a major organ in a pocket, after all.

Basically, an insulin infusion pump consists of a little computer, a tiny motor and a cartridge or reservoir of insulin. It has buttons and a display screen, like any computer, and is, as I said, about the size of a beeper. Generally, it's attached to the wearer's abdomen, thigh or buttock with about 40 inches of plastic tubing. It must be worn constantly.

The computer can be programmed to dispense insulin in different amounts at various times of the day and can be easily adjusted to accommodate what the user is doing at a given time. It can also deliver a special dose of insulin to cover a meal. All of this allows, at least potentially, more flexibility and better control of blood sugar than is usually possible with insulin injections. And control of blood sugar is what diabetes management is all about.

Insulin pumps are not new; they've been around for nearly 20 years. But the early models were much larger and had far fewer features than the ones now available. Once seen as a last resort for diabetics for whom no other methods of control worked, in the past few years insulin pumps have started to enter the mainstream of therapy for diabetes. There are now about 1 million of the pumps worldwide, and the youngest pumper is less than a year old.

The insulin infusion pump is not a cure for diabetes. A pump doesn't adjust automatically; the wearer has to program it and make adjustments based on frequent blood sugar monitoring, intimate and detailed self-knowledge and a sophisticated understanding of the interplay of diet, exercise and insulin. Using a pump isn't really less work than doing insulin injections; it's just that the hard work can be separated more easily from everyday life and is more likely to pay off in good control.

Over the past couple of years, I have seen some handwringing in various publications about the merging of computers and human bodies. Most of this concern centers on what might be called recreational biotechnology: people choosing to have computer chips implanted for cosmetic or other relatively frivolous reasons, or using tracking devices with Big Brother-ish implications. These articles often mention the potential of implantable medical technology for treating diabetes and other chronic conditions, but discussion of medical applications is dismissed pretty quickly -- with the implication that being kept alive by a machine is, like, really creepy.

Clearly, the people who write these articles don't suffer from a major chronic illness. Let me put it bluntly: Being kept alive by a machine -- especially one that doesn't hinder mobility -- beats being dead.

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