Still stressful

So K has had the pump for over 5 weeks. It has made such an improvement to her and our lives as I detailed in my previous post. However, it is still not perfect. We have had two recent experiences to rattle our nerves.

First, this past Monday night, her BG was a very high 323 mg/dl at midnight. We of course gave her insulin to bring her down and three hours later, she was even higher: 367. Our guidelines for rare occasions such as this is to assume there is a problem with her infusion set. So we had to bring her down old school style (hello syringe) and change her infusion set -at 3:00 AM. She did not enjoy any of it and neither did we - it's a rather time consuming process and a little harder when we're half-awake. We also checked her ketones because ketoacidosis can occur pretty quickly --but she luckily had no traces of that (we test her, easily, but sticking a little test strip in her urine). We then had to check her two hours later. I don't know how I was able to function yesterday - so tired!

The second stressful event occurred the next day (yesterday) when she was high again, mid-morning at preschool. I walked our great preschool director through dosing her with the meter/remote - as I've been able to do since K got the pump (which is SO incredibly liberating!!) - and K received the recommended amount of insulin. A short while later, she was to get her "free carb" that she gets every mid-morning. At this point in her routine, she gets 10 -12 grams of free carb every day at that time to keep her from going too low - whether it's because her body is making a decent amount of insulin at  that time, her hormones aren't over producing (like they do after bed-time), or because she's more active at that time of day - who knows - but it's just what we've been doing pretty much since she was diagnosed. Anyhow, yesterday, she did not eat all of her free carb (cheerios) and I should have known while we were driving home that she was low because she was especially irritable. Lesson learned: pull over, check her. Don't continue to drive. Don't stop at Ralph's to pick up a few groceries because it is conveniently located on the way home. When we got home and I finally checked her, her BG was a freaking 37 mg/dl!!  I was floored. I was guessing she might be in the 50s based on her behavior, but never thought that low. How was she even conscious?? I immediately gave her three glucose pills and she devoured a whole apple. Her blood sugar rose immediately to an appropriate level. I also discussed with her teachers and the preschool director today that she NEEDS to have that free carb. If she didn't want the cheerios yesterday, I need to be called and we can figure out how much of something the school has on hand for her to have.

Lots of learning still going on and still plenty of stress.