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.