Saturday, October 18, 2008

Stressful Diabetes Day......

That's what my husband said tonight at dinner......"It's been a stressful diabetes day."

It all started around midnight. His numbers all night were in the 300's or 400's. This morning he had trace ketones----the first positive ketones since leaving the hospital. We changed his site this morning and saw the numbers come down and ketones clear out, but then right before dinner we see another 400+ reading.

I know there will be days like this and I know there will be times he is high, and times he is low. However, it's always stressful. It's stressful because we will always have to "troubleshoot". There will never be a time when we say "Oh well, he's 406."....and go on our merry little way. Our hearts will be strained and our minds in the C.S.I. mode until the problem is solved or the numbers stabilize.

We finally figured out last nights problem. At first we kept thinking it was the pizza. We were beginning to think the kid will NEVER eat pizza again as long as he lives. But as the night progressed it was apparent this was more than just a pizza night.

This morning when I disconnected J.J.'s site I felt and heard the grittiness. Then I saw the grittiness fall from his site. There was a ton of sand in the lock. I asked him if he was playing naked in his dirt pit?!!! He laughed at that....but I was trying to figure out how that much sand/dirt could get into his site. Later when he took off the site from his skin the cannula was kinked. The poor kid was getting NO INSULIN all night. All the corrections.....nothing. All the basals.....nothing.

I guess we chalked this one up as a learning experience. First....hubby needs to do more site changes. He's only done one.....so he's more hesitant to change a site in the middle of the night when he's tired and it's dark, etc. Second.....dosing with a syringe is extremely important in these situations. Even if hubby didn't want to change a site, a dose with a syringe would've helped a lot. It would've helped carry J.J. to the morning when hubby or I could change his site without trying to struggle with a tired sleepy boy.

The afternoon 400+ reading we are still clueless about. However, at 10:30 p.m., we're starting again in the 300's!!!

Aye, aye, aye............I hope we can figure out all this pump stuff soon. It's crazy!!! I just keep thinking....."We didn't see numbers like this on MDI. We should go back". I also think that if this continues much longer they're going to send ME to the hospital with a heart attack, stroke, or nervous breakdown or something!!

Praying for a less stressful diabetes day tomorrow!!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

One of my friends, said her Mom uses a pump and it took her about 3 months to get everything regulated. So hang in there.

Penny Ratzlaff said...

I remember feeling the same way in the beginning. It took a few months for me to get comfortable with the pump. Now, it's my very best friend. I can't imagine our life without it.

Hang in there!

Katie said...

It took us a solid month before we felt like we knew how to troubleshoot. We also had a bunch of kinked cannulas before we got the hang of how to REALLY do a site change well. Now we can do them in the middle of the night without waking Richard O. up!

Now I feel totally confident adjusting Richard O's I:C ratios and basals on my own. I expect our next A1C to be well below our last one of 8.1%. If you haven't already, pick up copies of Think Like A Pancreas and Pumping Insulin. They will really help you understand how to troubleshoot!

Jill said...

Awww *Big Hugs* I'm sorry you're having a rough time right now! I can't speak from experience since we're not pumping yet but just wanted to tell you that you're in our thoughts and prayers! I know the "stress" of it all and the stress of having to do it all yourself so I just wanted to offer up the hugs! Hope you start seeing some better numbers soon :) Hang in there!

Lynnea said...

Thanks for all the encouraging words!! I can't explain how nice it is to know I'm not alone!

I'll have sometime this weekend to "study" those books, so hopefully we can analyze the night time data and figure things out.

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