YES, it has been forever since I posted and so much has happened. BUT, I will have to update you on the past 3 months later.
I wanted to give you a glimpse into the day to day with type 1 diabetes. It probably all started with spring break (the 1st week of April). I did a lot of reading about spending the day in the hot sun at Disney World and did all I could to prepare for the possible low blood sugars we would encounter. Well, funny thing is, she was actually running high the 1st day and then fairly normal the rest of the days. I thought, phew, that's a relief! The only snag we had was Abby's just placed new pod came off when she got into the pool and then 5 min after putting on another one our 2 yr old ripped the new one off of her! But, with all that, everything still stayed pretty normal. We continued to enjoy our spring break, visiting with friends, etc. Well, the day we left to drive back home her blood sugars started spiking up to 360+ , with small ketones and refused to come down. We were trying to correct her all day, then discovered we had a bent cannula (never thought it could be the pod as she would dip down a little and then shoot back up), so we put on a new pod. Still her blood sugars continued to be stubborn and stay between 250-350. I started making some small changes to her basal insulin rate (the insulin she receives hourly throughout the day), then I made changes to her insulin:carb ratios and finally her correction factor. VICTORY!! Finally after 10 days of crazy numbers we were back into the somewhat normal club!!
Well, until now. So she had 1 or 2 low blood sugars over the weekend (in the 60's) but otherwise looked good. She had been quite active with gymnastics and then helping with yard work. Then last night at bed 375!! And to top it off she had small ketones. So we gave her insulin for the ketones, but couldn't correct for the high as it had only been 2 hours since dinner. I checked her again at midnight and she was 262 so I gave her a correction. This morning...60...hmmm, don't like that. She had a bowl of oatmeal and milk, we gave her only part of her insulin to get her up over 100 as she has P.E. on Mondays. Lunch time she was 91..perfect! Then at recess she felt low, so she checked and she was 42!! They gave her juice and walked her to the nurse. 20 minutes later she was back to 97. The scary part is what she told me this afternoon. "Mom, when I felt low at recess I thought I was going to pass out." The thought of coming that close to needing a glucagon injection makes you scared and angry all at once. This disease is just so not fair. See this is what you do, you play with numbers, wait, hope it works, treat the highs, treat the lows, check blood sugar 7-10 times per day/24 hours a day and then you pray that everything works out, you pray they wake up in the morning, you pray they can function at their best at school, you pray for a cure.
