Hi! We are Katie and Laurel. We are the owners of RevelWear. This is our story.
Right about the time we started working on a general pocket to add to clothing, one of our good friends, Kate, had a 7 month old son. He was sick, really sick. When you are a new mom and your baby gets sick, it freaks you out. She went to the hospital with him, they said he had the flu and sent them home. So she rocked her baby. She went back to the hospital 3 times that night.
Then finally, it must have been a shift change or something, they took his blood glucose and it was 1200! He was a 7 month old baby. Literally dying in her arms. So they life-flighted him to the hospital, and this is right when we were writing the patent. He was in a diabetic coma for I don't remember how long, and he survived, which is remarkable. He is now 12.
They put him on a pump in the hospital. Normally, you have to go through the qualifying steps. He was 7 months old, there was no way to prick him, no fat on his body and there was no way for him to communicate. So they put him on a pump. That whole experience was so traumatizing for Kate, obviously. And the family and little Levi. Her first question when we talked after that whole experience, her main question was “Where am I going to put this pump on my baby?” A baby starting to roll around. A baby trying to sit up. A baby throwing tantrums. Maybe it was because she could wrap her head around that, it was more of a surface concern and not life or death. It was literally on her mind. Where am I supposed to put this?
We were not even prototyped at that point so we got the smallest pair of boys underwear that we could and we jerry-rigged our pocket on this small pair of underwear and gave it to Kate. She just put that over his diaper, tucked in his tubing and off he went. That was probably the most personal moment we had. It was just - wow - the relief for Kate, and just to watch the little baby just go back to being a baby. Instead of toting around a device that - on a baby - is just huge. It really was not just serendipitous, but a knock over the head. A turning point, this is what our pocket is for.
(pictured: Levi now)
We started working on this pocket in a broad sense. Circa 2012/2013/2014, we started making that pocket better, putting the flap over the top, containing it without any closer mechanisms. Well that is when we started meeting people with Type 1 diabetes. It felt very clear to us, this pocket should elevate people’s lives who actually need it, that suffer from a chronic disease. So we totally switched gears and have been focused on insulin pumps and type 1 diabetes ever since. So, we don't have diabetes, our kids don't have diabetes. But our focus shifted in about a month or two after starting. We realized we had to serve this crowd.
We pay attention to your cause. The disease. Your life. We are here so you can show off your RevelWear if you want to. Or you can make it discrete. Keep your pump safe. We know this is not a cure. But if it moves a dial and keeps serving a purpose, we will keep going.
Love,
Katie and Laurel
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