I am SO excited to finally be able to share this with you all! For several years we have been following a doctor and her team that have been working on a cure for type 1 diabetes. Up until now we have always asked everyone to donate to JDRF. While this has been great and the advancements have been amazing, we have always wanted to bring more attention to Dr. Faustman and her team. We have been donating to her for a few years now. Lee Iacocca has supported her a great deal. His wife had type 1 diabetes and when she died he promised her he would help find a cure!
We know many people know about JDRF and so it is easier to ask for donations. We are wanting to bring more attention to the Faustman Lab and make more people aware that there is an actual cure going through human trials. I'm excited to be able to share this information with everyone when it is going to be a start of a new year! This next year we are going to be doing whatever we can to help raise money to donate to The Faustman Lab. It takes money to find a cure, and she found one so we want to help her and find the money! :-)
I will keep everyone up to date on what we will be doing to raise money. Two things we are going to do this new year is to sell Shanie's Dream Team t-shirts and also awareness bracelets! They are in the works so we will let you all know when they will be available!
For more information about Dr. Faustman and her team or if you would like to donate, please visit www.faustmanlab.org
I'm really excited for this new year and to be able to share the hopes for a cure for type 1 diabetes!!
Hope everyone has a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Friday, December 16, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
24/7
Well as most of you may know from my facebook status, we had a rough and very long night last night. First I want you all to know that I am not complaining, I am just simply trying to bring awareness about type 1. And in doing this I need to share what this disease does and explain to everyone that this really is a 24/7 fight.
We had a fun spontaneous trip down to Bakes at 11pm because Shanie just had to have In N Out! SO since we ALL love In N Out it wasn't too hard to talk her dad into driving that far for their food. At 11:47pm Shanie's blood sugar was 252 when she tested before she ate. And we knew she put in enough insulin to cover her food.
At 2:32am she went to 497! At 2:50am she went even higher to 532!! At this point she was starting to feel sick. We know with her that when she gets that high and she starts to feel sick DKA (Diabetic ketoacidosis) is kicking in. If she vomits it starts a vicious cycle that is really hard to get out of and that is how she ended up at the Children's Hospital in ICU in a coma for 2 days! That was when she was 10 years old.
Thankfully her dad was taking care of her so I could get a little bit of sleep. As I slept about an hour and a half, I didn't know she went over 500. He had her change her site and come to find out some tiny little bubbles were in the tube. So she was going without insulin for just a few hours and her body was already in trouble.
I got up and took over so her dad could get some sleep. After her pump change at 3:57am she was down to 448. Of course I couldn't go back to sleep with her that high, so the two of us hung out in her bed watching Nick at Night. :-)
Tested again at 4:43am and she was down to 395, again at 5:21am she was 340, again at 5:58am she was finally down to 293. So at this point I felt okay to get some sleep. Shanie was so tired, she finally crashed out at that point too. I woke up at 9am and checked her again and she was back down to 143!
The bad thing about trying to get her number down, is that you want to keep pumping extra insulin to get her down faster. Her insulin pump is like an IV and slowly drips insulin into her body 24/7, so it takes time for it to get her number down. If we had put extra insulin to get her number down faster, she could have crashed or we would have still been up trying to correct lows. So we just had to wait and keep checking to make sure her insulin was going in.
You never know when nights like this will happen. Some friends of ours had a similar night as well and they were going to Disneyland today! So you just have to fight through the night and just keep going the next day! I'm not asking for a pat on the back, there are millions of us parents doing the same thing. We just need people to be aware that this disease fights our children 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No matter if they are sleeping, awake or going to Disneyland! It is always fighting against our children so we in turn will always fight back no matter the time of day or night.
We had a fun spontaneous trip down to Bakes at 11pm because Shanie just had to have In N Out! SO since we ALL love In N Out it wasn't too hard to talk her dad into driving that far for their food. At 11:47pm Shanie's blood sugar was 252 when she tested before she ate. And we knew she put in enough insulin to cover her food.
At 2:32am she went to 497! At 2:50am she went even higher to 532!! At this point she was starting to feel sick. We know with her that when she gets that high and she starts to feel sick DKA (Diabetic ketoacidosis) is kicking in. If she vomits it starts a vicious cycle that is really hard to get out of and that is how she ended up at the Children's Hospital in ICU in a coma for 2 days! That was when she was 10 years old.
Thankfully her dad was taking care of her so I could get a little bit of sleep. As I slept about an hour and a half, I didn't know she went over 500. He had her change her site and come to find out some tiny little bubbles were in the tube. So she was going without insulin for just a few hours and her body was already in trouble.
I got up and took over so her dad could get some sleep. After her pump change at 3:57am she was down to 448. Of course I couldn't go back to sleep with her that high, so the two of us hung out in her bed watching Nick at Night. :-)
Tested again at 4:43am and she was down to 395, again at 5:21am she was 340, again at 5:58am she was finally down to 293. So at this point I felt okay to get some sleep. Shanie was so tired, she finally crashed out at that point too. I woke up at 9am and checked her again and she was back down to 143!
The bad thing about trying to get her number down, is that you want to keep pumping extra insulin to get her down faster. Her insulin pump is like an IV and slowly drips insulin into her body 24/7, so it takes time for it to get her number down. If we had put extra insulin to get her number down faster, she could have crashed or we would have still been up trying to correct lows. So we just had to wait and keep checking to make sure her insulin was going in.
You never know when nights like this will happen. Some friends of ours had a similar night as well and they were going to Disneyland today! So you just have to fight through the night and just keep going the next day! I'm not asking for a pat on the back, there are millions of us parents doing the same thing. We just need people to be aware that this disease fights our children 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No matter if they are sleeping, awake or going to Disneyland! It is always fighting against our children so we in turn will always fight back no matter the time of day or night.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Cute Boys = Good Blood Sugar!
Okay, I'm sure you are all saying....WHAT? LOL!
Well we have found this to be true with Shanie. We have no idea if this is true for anyone else. When we told her doctors at UCLA they thought it was funny. But it is now a fact in her chart! :-)
We first noticed it when we went to Disneyworld in 2009. Her numbers, for the most part, were great. We started to notice that whenever she would see a cute boy for an extended amount of time, or see lots of cute boys, she would go low. We seriously started to watch this. Hey whatever works, right? LOL! We did find out that this is in fact true for Shanie.
We just got back from spending two days at two places that Shanie does not care for, Legoland and Seaworld. Mostly she doesn't like them because they are not her beloved Disneyland, LOL! What we did find out this time was that in fact it is cute boys that keep her blood sugar levels down.
Usually when we go someplace that she is not happy about she will stress out and stress causes her numbers to go high and then when her numbers are high, she is really crabby. She hates to feel this way too.
So as we spent the past two days at two places she doesn't care for, she did see a lot of cute boys and babies, another one of her weaknesses. :-) And for the past two days not only were her numbers good, she actually had a good time too! :-)
P.S. She keeps wanting to ask her doctors to recommend a cute boy to follow her around instead of a dog! LOL!
Well we have found this to be true with Shanie. We have no idea if this is true for anyone else. When we told her doctors at UCLA they thought it was funny. But it is now a fact in her chart! :-)
We first noticed it when we went to Disneyworld in 2009. Her numbers, for the most part, were great. We started to notice that whenever she would see a cute boy for an extended amount of time, or see lots of cute boys, she would go low. We seriously started to watch this. Hey whatever works, right? LOL! We did find out that this is in fact true for Shanie.
We just got back from spending two days at two places that Shanie does not care for, Legoland and Seaworld. Mostly she doesn't like them because they are not her beloved Disneyland, LOL! What we did find out this time was that in fact it is cute boys that keep her blood sugar levels down.
Usually when we go someplace that she is not happy about she will stress out and stress causes her numbers to go high and then when her numbers are high, she is really crabby. She hates to feel this way too.
So as we spent the past two days at two places she doesn't care for, she did see a lot of cute boys and babies, another one of her weaknesses. :-) And for the past two days not only were her numbers good, she actually had a good time too! :-)
P.S. She keeps wanting to ask her doctors to recommend a cute boy to follow her around instead of a dog! LOL!
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