Swings

For days, K's blood sugar would not come down during the night (she lingered in the 200s despite corrections). We have slowly increased her basal during that time. Now, the last two nights, she's running too low through the night (60s).  So, we'll now decrease the basal rate - and I guarantee I'll be writing in a week to say she's running too high...
(My new goal is to write on the blog a little more often, but less words)

Dance my pretty

Something about the way K flowed about in her beautiful "Shabbat dress" tonight made me think of this great pic from Sept, 2009, when she was not even three years old. Like looking at most of her pre-diabetes photos, it makes us a little sad though.  

So excuse me while I send my thoughts out rather stream of consciousness via this blog tonight. I'm the only adult home (Marc's hanging with old friends), so I need somewhere to process this. We had a lovely potluck dinner among friends and acquaintances, and Israeli dancing too. K's blood sugar was a delightful 77 a good half hour before dinner. I let her have about an ounce (or less) of typically verboten juice right as dinner began. Dosed her for 40 carbs as a "50-50 combo bolus" - being she got 50% of the dosage up front and the remainder was to be dripped in over the next 2.5 hours. The combo works well when she under-eats because we can cancel the insulin, rather than force her to eat the equivalent carbs for which she was dosed (that was our life with injections) --AND the combo works well for tricky, slower digested foods, like bread and pizza - of which there was both at this dinner. 

So, she ate challah (how much, I don't even know), 2 itty bitty slices of pizza (worth what? - dunno, 20 g??), fruit (maybe 6 g worth??), tried mac and cheese that she didn't like - and then danced like a machine with her "boyfriend". Oh, then out came the dessert and thankfully she chose the individually packed ice cream, which had nutrition label - mango flavor. I'm thinking "awesome" - but it was 34 freaking carbs! So, I gave her more insulin - to cover 20 g. Too much? too little? I dunno...

So, once K goes to bed, she pulled the too frequently chanted at this time of night, "My tummy hurts!" (This is delay tactic #3, behind "I need fresh water" and "Please sing another song".) So I checked her BG (around 8:30) and she was 94. Nice, I think, but there's still a lot more insulin "on board"  --ie in her system. I tell her she's not low and kiss her goodnight, again. About an hour later, I checked her again and she went down to 83. That's not too low, but will she keep going down? - or will she go high? - with that pizza and bread finally rearing their ugly carb heads - plus she tends to go up this time of night anyhow. I'm keeping this blog post open and will update it with the next BG check.

10:33: nice, she's back up to 92. Doubt she'll go down now :) --now, let's hope she doesn't go too high!

Will hitting "publish" on this blog jinx me?

BDD

BDD = Bad Diabetes Day
In the big picture, most days are bad. The days when there are no highs or lows, I want to photograph my log book to share with the world. "Look! It does happen once in a while!"  But this past Saturday was BAD. Without blaming it all on my partner.... I will. But, it could have happened to either of us and he handled it really well once he realized he screwed up - probably better than I could have.

K had been high through the night Fri - Sat morning (241 post dinner; 205 at midnight; 282 at 3AM; and 253 at wakeup). Marc decided immediately to change the pump, which we were scheduled to do that AM anyhow. Because I have been sick, he didn't want to wake me to help out, like we usually do - though we both have done it on our own many times. "Changing the pump" as we call it - is not changing the actual pump, it's changing all the disposable parts to it, which have to be done every 2 - 3 days. It involves filling a new insulin cartridge, properly replacing it into the pump, priming the insulin through the tube that will connect to Kate, and, the least foolproof part of the task, injecting the inset into K's hip area. This must have been where something when wrong with Saturday's change, though everything looked fine. Marc corrected her high BG after changing the pump, then dosed her for breakfast: French toast. K seemed perfectly fine. I left for my hair appointment a little after 10 and Marc checked her at 10:35. At that time, the meter indicated that her BG was too high for it to compute. He checked her a second time to make sure it wasn't a mistake, but he got the same reading. This means that her blood sugar was over 600!!  It hasn't been this high since the day she was diagnosed 20 months ago; none of the insulin got into her. From here on out, Marc was awesome. He properly decided that he should give her a shot (and did the right computation of amount of insulin), because it is the most effective at times like this and quicker than changing her pump inset, which he did after he found her hiding (knowing what was coming) and gave her the shot.

In less than an hour, she was down to 562; 494 a half hour after that and 129 at 2:00. Poor thing could eat NO carbs during that time. Luckily, we had no plans, so she wasn't missing out on anything. The scary thing is that 1. she said she felt fine! How can that be?! and 2, as Marc said in his text to me while I was at salon: "Cannot believe how precarious her life is and will always be." Without insulin, she would bed dead in a matter of days. I'm thankful every day for that amazing invention!!!!

The day got better for K, and us. Our great t1d babysitter came to our house at 3:00 and understood the predicament we'd had earlier (it has happened to her before). They all had a fine time together as we went to a wedding that afternoon.