Waaaaaa!

Let me just clarify that this blog is about ME - and my journey parenting a child with type 1 diabetes. My daughter is Awesome, yes with a capital A. Some people might say I'm awesome too, capital A optional, in large part because I "am strong". I don't need to pat myself on the back, but in sum, I'm able to hold myself together pretty well (for contrary evidence, of course, see blog from last week about crying at the gym...). I cannot be down in the dumps all the time because it wouldn't be good for ANY of us. Life is what it is, our circumstances are what they are, moving on. C'est la vie. I don't speak French, but I think that applies here, right?

But.... every now and then, being a surrogate pancreas does catch up to me - and today is one of those days. In reality, there are a confluence of things. 1. I'm tired; 2. This morning during a very mundane dance move at a work out class, I tweaked my already screwed up right hip so much that I cannot even walk normally; and, 3. among other daily "life" events - diabetes threw us for a curve ball today and I'm just SICK of IT! I won't go into it too much, but, long story short, because her blood sugar had been too high for too long, I had to go to K's preschool and change her pump - during lunch time  - and so she couldn't eat the carbs (ie yummy things) in her lunch until much later. When I got to her, she was noshing on her celery and in fine spirits, but I felt so bad as her lunch box was wide open and the mango and peanut butter pretzels were just staring at her, as if saying "ha ha you can't eat us!" I took out the rest of the celery from the box, then closed the lid and pushed it aside. I went to the director's office to change the pump (without K during this task) and, during the course of our conversation, she said something to the effect, "I don't know how you do it." She then held and distracted K as I put in her new pump inset (without numbing because I needed her BG to come down immediately, not after waiting 30 minutes for the spot to be numb from lidocaine cream).

I had about 20 minutes before I picked up the carpool, so I had time to go to Starbucks and feel sorry for myself. How do I do it? Diabetes management suck so much ass. Maybe K's strength is what keeps me strong. I dunno, but today, nothing can lift me up (certainly not my right hip...) I'm just tired of it.  I'm tired of diabetes always on my mind! I'm tired of anticipating the phone calls from school and getting anxious if it's 10:06 when I normally get the call at 10:02. I'm tired of putting the kids to bed, yet continually remind myself to check her "soon" once we know she's asleep. I'm tired of staying up late - and tired of waking up at 3 AM most nights out of the week - to check her BG. I'm tired of counting and weighing carbs. I've never been able to diet religiously because I hate counting and logging calories - now I do a very similar thing, but for my 5 year old. I'm tired of telling my daughter to wash her hands so we can check her BG, and tired of telling her she has to wait to eat. I'm tired of carrying her black bag everywhere we go. I'm tired of guesswork and trying to understand it (like when she was close to low last Sunday before bed after a VERY high carb birthday meal for and I knew she'd go high, so I had to argue with my husband who wanted to give her sugar because she was close to low and had a ton of insulin "on board". He luckily listened to me - and I was right, sadly. She was later in the 300s for too long.) I'm just tired of it all. But I press on for the fear of diabetes related complications down the road, and normally, I even do so with a smile on my face. But not today.

Crazy nights here

Last night, K's BG was great a little after 11: 98 mg/dl. We felt that we could let her go through the rest of the night without checking her, but just after 1 AM, I woke up to, "My tummy hurts!" from her room. I zipped into her room, checked her BG and she was low (she's never wrong if it wakes her up in the middle of the night :( ). I gave her almost half a juice box (about 7 g of carb) --and promised her she'd feel better in just a few minutes. Just over 10 minutes later, right as I was drifting back to sleep, I heard her yell, "YOU LIED TO ME!" (we've learned that one is not prone to good manners when enduring low blood sugars, especially during the night)   I hustled back to her and she said her tummy still hurts. I checked her again and her BG went DOWN(!) to 53 mg/dl. Next quick sugar source, 1.5 glucose pills, popped into her mouth and she's content.
Rest of the night was seamless and K's BG was good when she woke up a little after 7.
(I won't bore you with the never ending "why?" we contemplate regarding her low BG. For the previous two nights, she'd been running high. And she had pizza for dinner?? - which normally stays in one's system for a while [we know of a family that does a 12 hour combo-bolus for pizza])

Oy

That's the only heading I could come up with that does not include an expletive. So, while in the gym bathroom yesterday morning, my phone rang. Only because it was my sons' elementary school, did I answer it in that locale. It was the school nurse (hereinafter "Nurse Wonderful"), who before she could tell me that one of the boys was in her office with a bleeding head, quickly relayed that she's retiring. --And the reason this is important enough for her to call me with this info, unlike pretty much anyone else in my life, is that it means she will not be our nurse next year for K. Nurse Wonderful let me know that she had just told the school principal and wanted me to know right away - and was told by the director of health services (her boss) to let me know that she would be replaced and K will be fine. I told her congrats on her retirement and appreciated her calling me, as I sputtered through my (selfish) tears (yes, in the gym bathroom).
See, we have finally been comfortable with K starting kinder next year at the boys' current school. Despite there being NO other diabetics at the school and despite that Nurse Wonderful will not be at the school full time (no nurses are in these delightful budget cut times we live in  --except, in our district, a very small school with the medically fragile population), we were comfortable with K there next year because we were reassured that there would always be a nurse available for K: Nurse Wonderful or the nurse across the street at the middle school who could always run over. And although we've never met the nurse at the middle school, we were fine with this scenario because we love Nurse Wonderful. Not only is she an easy person with whom to talk, she is great with the kids with the various injuries or ailments they've had at school, she has always been supportive on our diabetes journey - and eager to learn more, including taking a class at CHLA to learn K's pump. We also knew that K was comfortable at the school that she's been dragged to since she was 9 months old and we know staff and they know her and her situation.  
I called Nurse Wonderful's boss to confirm that she will in fact be replaced (which, as we both know, is impossible, because she's SO wonderful) because she could save a lot more money  --and spread nurses even more thin -- NOT replacing her. She said that it is "her plan" to replace her. She knew I could sense her lack of certainty with that response so she assured me that K will be taken care of and also assured me that Nurse Wonderful's replacement, who cannot even be considered until the summer (begin more heart palpitations on my part), will also take the pump training class and I'll have a chance to get to know her/him. Of course, I'm thinking, "when, a couple days before school starts?!"
I have calmed down since yesterday.
Signed, that random lady crying in various places in the gym on Monday but who has calmed down a teeny bit since thtn

Monday Night Madness!

FYI: I did give her 2 glucose pills
before taking this picture!

Less than 2 hours before K's BG dropped this low, she was a whopping 362 mg/dl. About an hour and half before that, she was 348 mg/dl - so, in situations like this, when her BG is over 300 and goes up further after insulin correction and no carbs, we assume something is wrong with pump accessories. So, upon the 362 reading, I gave her a shot including dinner insulin, removed the pump to change the insulin, tubing and inset, and hoped for the best.
The insulin from the shot seemed to work: 50 minutes later she was 278, but still too high to eat dinner. After about another half hour, she finally ate dinner (7:30 PM) - but immediately after eating, K moseyed to her room and lay on her bed. I followed her and based on her apparent tiredness (I thought she was about to pass out), told her she could bathe the next morning. I asked her to get up to brush teeth but she said her tummy hurt too much (classic "low" symptom for her). I never thought she'd be low, but, because she did seem rather out of it, I checked her and got the delightful 38 mg/dl reading. I was floored. After two glucose pills, some plum, and candied almonds: she bounced up to a good 119. And I was exhausted and confused.  Oh and did I mention I was single parenting? Yeah, the hubby was in New York for work.