Diabetes Independence Win!

I'm sitting here at the urgent care with Adam, waiting to be seen like everyone else who's kid has a hacking cough and nasty sore throat.

So, obviously I haven't blogged in quite awhile. But I felt the urge to share a mini milestone of sorts with my DOC peeps ;)

Today we had school conferences for the kids right after school and I decided that the kids could play on the playground while we "conferenced" with each teacher. I figured they would be fine for a half hour or so. When he was tested before school was out, he was in the 200's with no IOB.

When we were done hearing glowing reports of how well our kiddos are doing (oh yes, I just mommy-bragged right there!) Adam came to tell me that he felt low so he tested himself and was 65. He and Sydney determined that he needed 2 glucose tabs to bring up his BG.

And on his daily log sheet for school, I found that Sydney had written this:

65 @ 1:40

I'm so proud of my kids!

He's cured! (But just at lunchtime, apparently...)

Arrrgghhhegghhehhe.

We have been battling lows. CONSTANTLY for the past 3 weeks or so. I kept thinking they would go away, but I finally started changing some things and he's still been going low.

I suppose there is one constant thing about diabetes. It is never constant.

No matter how hard you try.

I had Adam having perfectly wonderful numbers for the first month of school. The second month? Poor kid is low every single afternoon. While this may mean his A1c will be fantastic in December, I do not like all of the lows that have contributed to it.

He started out the school year with an insulin to carb ratio of 1:19 for lunchtime. That's what worked this summer. Over the past 3 weeks, I have decreased it every few days, and tonight, after another 64 this afternoon at school (causing him to miss PE again because after 15 minutes he was 61...) I changed his I:C ratio for lunch to 1:27. If that doesn't do it....well then I give.

I GIVE.

He's also on a completely different basal pattern. During the school day he was getting about .40 units per hour. Now? I have him at .25 units per hour.

I have people every single day ask me, "Why does this happen?" Why? Why is he going low?

And I'm at a loss for words. I don't even know how to begin to explain it, so I just don't. I just say that diabetes is unpredictable. But that kind of makes me feel like a failure, that I can't "fix" my kid like it seems like everyone wants to.

If I hear the phrase, "Is he stable now?" I think I may scream. I know you all know what I mean. 

We have only had one small issue this year so far. With the increasing amount of lows (that I am desperately trying to get under control), he has been waiting in class while feeling low because he doesn't want to interrupt his teacher.

Now, I LOVE and adore his teacher. As does Adam.  I respect her immensely and I hand-picked her to be Adam's teacher.  He is super comfortable with her! But there are quite a few...uh..."troublemakers" in Adam's class and he seems to feel this responsibility to NOT bother his teacher. She has repeatedly told him that it is FINE to interrupt her, but that is just not his in his character, no matter how much I drill into him that he must go to the nurse if he feels low. As a result, he's ended up in the health office with some lows in the 40's.

Our wonderful nurse has brought it up to me a few times that Adam will say that he doesn't want to interrupt, so she suggested that we develop a special "signal" with the teacher vs. just having Adam hold up his hand while she is teaching.

We ended up having Adam decorate 3 green cards with his favorite Ninjago stickers that I laminated. When he is feeling low during class time, all he has to do is raise his card in the air and his teacher will automatically send him and his buddy to the health office. Also, this will help when she is speaking to another adult (he won't interrupt) so all he has to do is hand her the card and she will immediately know that he needs to go to the nurse immediately.

He is happy with this arrangement, so I hope it helps! I've realized that despite the fact that we've already had one school year under our belt, each year will be very different, and we'll need to find new strategies to make diabetes run as smooth as possible.

Now, if we could just figure out these afternoon lows, I'd be a happy camper!

2012 JDRF Walk Video!

Well, this year I got my act together and created a JDRF Walk video for the first time. I'm not sure what prompted me to do it...but at 9pm one night I got a bug up my a$$ and finished it by 1am. When I go, I go hard. :) Anyway, Adam is excited for the walk this year and I thought it might help garner some extra donations by creating a video. I've already had a few of my friends tell me that it was SO unfair to make them cry by posting videos of my kid on Facebook. :)

In other news, Adam's blood sugars have been WHACKADOODLE. Yes, I used that word again. We had such a great first month at school, now his blowing 40's left and right for no reason (thanks, T1D).

I'm hesitant to make across-the-board changes, so I set up a separate basal profile to see if that would help, but it seems like he's still low before lunch and after lunch. So tonight I'll be changing those I:C ratios, because there is nothing sadder than walking into the health office to see your kiddo in tears because he's low and he's missing P.E. on ROPES DAY. Sigh. Apparently ropes day is a very big deal to a 1st grader. :)

He could be sick. I just had the nastiest case of strep throat this past weekend, and I noticed that he had a bit of a rash, but a negative rapid strep test. So he was put on antibiotics anyway.

Other than that, the school year is going great! Both kids are thriving and having a blast in school, which makes me so happy.

The Best Time of the Year!

It's that time of year again...back to school!

We have been back in school since August 8th, and life has just blasted forward at warp speed. School, soccer, karate, orchestra, homework, volunteering, play dates, birthday parties...I love this time of year! We are back in a routine, we all feel productive and life is good. My Fourth and First graders:

Adam's transition to 1st grade diabetes-wise has been seamless. What a change from last year and all of my anxiety! This year we walked into the health office for yearly "training" and ended up chatting for an hour. Adam's 1st grade teacher is phenomenal (Sydney had her for 1st grade) and came to our house (!!) this summer to learn all about Adam's diabetes. She is the most organized teacher I have ever known, and it also helps that she thinks Adam is pretty cool, so we are going to have a great year. His numbers so far have been wonderful (with the exception of yesterday when he woke up at 370, I corrected and dosed for breakfast and by the time we got to school the meter read HIGH). So, I just took him home, changed the pod, gave an injection and once he was feeling better and I saw that his number was coming down, I sent him back to school. He was 155 by lunch! I feel so much more confident this year on what school will do to his numbers and how to handle them. It's a good feeling to be able to make these good "guesses" while aiming at the moving target that is diabetes.

I went in and read Adam's book to his class like I did last year, and the kids had a lot of good questions. Interestingly enough, he hasn't been bugged by kids about his diabetes...but, he was kind of "bullied" a bit about his cleft lip scar!

For some reason this shocked me, because last year it was a non-issue. I don't recall anyone ever asking about it. But this year within the first week, he had a not-so-nice girl get in his face and say over and over, "What's wrong with your weird lip?" and "Why is your lip so weird and ugly?"

Sigh. Luckily, these things don't bother Adam too terribly (although it had to a bit since he told me about it) and I asked him what he did. He said he first ignored her, then when she kept pressing him, he did what he learned in karate: He looked at her in the eye and said, "Stop! Leave me alone!" and walked away. That's my boy. :)

He's in a new class with lots of kids he doesn't know (although he has his best friend Kate, so that makes the world perfect for him!) so I imagine it will take some time for everyone to settle in.

Adam also had his endo appointment last week (oops, I need to still get his blood work done!) and his A1c is holding steady at 7.7% for the past 3 visits! I was thinking he'd be higher since this summer he ate me out of house and home and was higher than normal. I'd love him to be around 7.0%, but I am happy that he is STEADY. It must mean we are doing something right, right? :)

So, life is busy and good. I am able to volunteer my little heart out at school - I am room mom for Adam's class and I help out quite a bit in the library. I am the official school "laminator," lol. Although Adam likes to tell people that I am the RAMINATOR. Which is just hilarious when he says it out loud. I will hopefully be in Sydney's class too, once her teacher gets her volunteer schedule out.

Yay for school!

Growing Pains

Every six months or so, I'm tempted to post a "What the heck? His insulin is like water" post.

And then I remember I've already done that a few times.

Each time I forget that we are dealing with a growing boy here, and his insulin needs are constantly going to change.

Here's a pic of Adam's I:C ratios for June:

These were set after our last Endo appointment in May and were working great!

Until they weren't. For a good part of July, I couldn't get Adam out of the 300's some days. And I continued to be befuddled (really, Steph? Have we not been through this before??) Yet it took me a few weeks to catch on to the fact that I might need to change some of his I:C ratios. It took looking at his 30-day meter average and seeing a 190 staring back at me to get serious.


So I rage-I:C-ratio'ed. Is that even in the D-dictionary?

I ignored all the great advice about making small changes every 3 days. Instead of dropping his I:C ratio by one every few days, I did this:

Yeah, I like to live life on the edge.

But to my surprise, it worked. I haven't seen a number in the 300's in 3 days.

And, um, yeah...we've been testing a lot lately. As you can see by his PDM. But look at those purty numbers!

For some reason it still pains me to see that he continues to need more and more insulin as time goes on. I know it's part of the deal.

I am positive I will be upping some of those once school starts and adding in some different patterns depending on his school schedule. But for now, I'm happy to not have a cranky boy who is sick of being high all the time!

D-Peeps are Everywhere!

This just totally makes me smile. Especially after all the excitement of Friends for Life, and everyone getting to hang out. I love knowing we are all not alone in our journey!

We went on a little vacation last week - well, the kids and I tagged along on Jason's business trip so WE got to play while he worked. Don't feel too sorry for him though, he was in Vegas last week with his brother for some fun. :)

We hit San Francisco and got to see some relatives I hadn't seen in a long time, and our kids got to meet! Nothing like second cousins having a blast. And Adam discovered snails. We don't have those here in the desert...and now I know that if I want to keep him busy for a few hours, I'd just need to import a bucket of them.

Love my weird kid.

So then we headed down to the good ol' O.C., and hit Huntington Beach for some surf and sand.

While the kids are beaching, I took some time to do a little Facebooking. I tagged ourselves in Huntington and I get a message back from none other than Heidi, saying, "Will you be there tomorrow? We are going to be there!"

Of course I say, "Heck YES!" Sure, we live in the same state....a mere one city apart, but real life does not lend a lot of time to get together. So the next best thing is for two D-families to meet up in Cali!

And what a lovely lunch we had! Heidi and her hubby are just two of the nicest, most genuine people you could ever meet and after a little warming up, our kids were acting like little crazy people in the restaurant, having a blast together. It really warmed my heart to see Adam bonding with Jack. And I think Adam is jonesing for a play date with Max one of these days! They showed off their pods, they both had numbers in the 300's pre-lunch (LOL! - I think we were both laughing at how hard it is to maintain fairly normal BG's while on vacation!)

This is our favorite picture. They were just walking along the pier, chatting. Love!

What a blessing it is to have all of these D-mamas in my life. And I know that as Adam gets older, this will be more and more important to him - when he's old enough to go to camp, he'll already have friends there to help him enjoy it even more. Thanks to the DOC, our circle of "family" is bigger than before.

Where's the strangest place YOU'VE found a test strip?

I think this morning takes the cake. I put the pan on the stove to make some eggs for Adam, and I saw something peeking out underneath. I moved the pan and saw this:

No clue how it got there, but safe to say that so far in our diabetes journey, this is the strangest place I have found one!