I Hear a Pump!

It's funny the things your ears are tuned to once you are a D-mom. Our lives are full of distinct buzzes and beeps...ones that only a diabetic would recognize.

Tonight we hit IHOP for dinner (Woot for Kids Eat Free!) and were seated in a booth across from a dad and his two boys having dinner. We went about our business - I was checking Adam's blood sugar while Jason asked the waitress for their nutritional information pamphlet. I dosed Adam upfront for about half of the carbs I figured he'd eat and there was some beeping from his pump as the bolus got canceled and I had to pull it out of his pump pack. I noticed the dad in the booth across from us looking, but I'm used to it, so I didn't think anything of it.

While we were waiting for our food, I hear a pump beeping again. I was thinking, "Dang it, really? WTF is wrong with his pump now?" As I was digging for Adam's pump again, Jason looked around and then kicks me under the table and says, "He's got a PUMP!"

I said, "The dad or the kid?" And he said, "The dad!"

We both sat there for a minute and thought how cool it was. :) I wanted to strike up a conversation, but our food came at that point and we started eating. I pulled out Adam's remote and dosed him for some more of his dinner, and the dad caught my eye and asked me which pump we had!

So we all showed our pumps! I nudged Adam and said, "Hey, that dad over there has a pump just like you!" And he got ALL excited and pulled his out and says, "Mine's green! What color is yours?" (It was a purple Medtronic!)

Then Adam stands up and pulls out Dex and says, "Look at my Dexcom! Where's yours?" I didn't think he'd have one, but the dad said, "I left mine at home!" Adam thought it was so cool, that he's pulling up his shirt, saying, "Dude...hey, wanna look at my pump site?? And here's my Dexcom site!" He was totally thrilled to share the "pump stuff" with someone. And yeah, I need to work on my 5 year old calling grown-ups "Dude." Totally not cool. :)

Anyway, it was a very neat moment. The dad was diagnosed when he was 15 and has had T1 for 27 years. He said he was a camp counselor at Camp AZDA here in Arizona  for years, and encouraged us to send Adam when he was old enough.

It was just neat to see a grown up, having lived with T1D for 27 years, just having a normal dinner with his kids...and made us realize that Adam will do the same thing when he is older.  And it was neat to see Adam so animated about it - often other adults will want to see his pump site and pump and he's reluctant to show it off...he had NO problem sharing with a fellow T1D!

It's little moments like this that make you feel not so alone in all of this.  There are others out there...and you never know where you'll meet them!

Good Fridays

I'm joining in this week for Roselady's "Good Fridays" over at Diapeepees. Share something fun about your week, and no D allowed! (And I've got nothin' good to say about that this week anyway.)

1.  I have a preschool graduate! Just take a look at this handsome little devil: 

2. I now have a beautiful, smart 3rd grader! I can't believe she is in 3rd grade...where is the time going?

3.  Today is the first day of summer vacation! We are having all the neighbor kids over for a "Welcome to Summer" pool party. The water balloons are filled, the water slide is up...and prepare for mama to be exhausted at the end of the day!

The Day the Dexcom Died

I just have to laugh.

I mean really...y'all know we've had lots of problems with our Dexcom - lots of Error 1's and Error 0's, endless ??? and some just plain ol' "sensor failures." We've never gotten a sensor to last for a full 7 days.

Until this week, that is. And thank goodness for that! With Adam's stomach flu and the aftermath with all of the lows, Dex really came through for us - a FULL WEEK of accurate numbers!

So, naturally, I thought "let's go balls to the wall and restart the darn thing!" to see if we could eek out a few more days out of it. It restarted great and had good numbers and then...

It started flipping out and we got the Trapezoid of Death with the exclamation point and an Error Code that said 270000.

So I call Dexcom and the tech lady says, "Yeah, I've never heard of that Error Code before."

Figures.

Luckily, Dexcom is overnighting us a new receiver. Unluckily, I called on Friday night, they don't ship on weekends, so we'll have to wait until Tuesday.

All I can say is, "Sayonara, sucker." I'm hoping that this new receiver will give us fewer problems than our last one!

The DOC officially has an ANTHEM

You must run over right now and visit Denise at My Sweet Bean and Her Pod.

Go ahead, I'll wait. 

Can you get over that awesomeness? I'm totally singing "Type 1 D moms" in my head right now. The girl can ROCK IT! And the lyrics...pure creative genius! I mean seriously...every day I am amazed at the talent we have in the diabetes community. We've got Joanne, with her hilariously accurate videos about what not to say to the parent of a Type 1 Diabetic, the uber-talented Mike Lawson, who's "My Life as a Pincushion" videos had me in stitches the other night, and we cannot forget our fearless Reyna and her onion-goggled awesomeness. Not to mention the countless others I am totally forgetting right now.

We've got some serious talent here in the DOC. Me, not so much. If I sang, your dogs would probably run for cover. I can bake a mean cookie. If anyone finds a pancreas-shaped cookie cutter, let me know. :)

Or maybe I should take up crocheting. (It's incredible what you can find on Etsy! Or maybe this should be on Regretsy....)

Anyone? Who wouldn't want a snuggly pancreas to cuddle up with at night?

This is the reason I do this.

A friend of mine said to me today, "You know, you are so blessed (not that Adam has diabetes) but that you have SO many people supporting you and able to give you diabetes advice on Facebook."

I totally agreed with her and thought it was awesome that she recognized how supportive we are of each other. The DOC isn't just limited to blogs, but Facebook as well.

Some people may think, "Gee, why does she whine about diabetes all the time on FB." Or, "Why would she post about her child's illness or the fact that he was in the hospital on FB?"

Well, I have to say that sometimes I do think twice before I post about diabetes-related things on Facebook. How far is too far and how much information is too much? I finally realized that I don't have a huge number of FB friends, and those that are...are the ones I'd share this with anyway.

But back to my point...(trust me, I DO have one!)

In posting about Adam's illness, I was inadvertently able to help another mom with a sweet little 3 year old girl who has diabetes (and she has a newborn as well!) and lives across the country from me. This mom doesn't have a blog, but we became Facebook friends via another friend of mine who "hooked" us up as support for each other.

She messaged me last night to see if I was still awake - and like most D-moms, I was! She called me on the phone and I could tell she was worried about her little girl - she had been throwing up that day and it sounded a lot like what had happened with Adam. I hope I was able to give her good advice...the advice you all shared with me...and just give some moral support. Frankly, I was honored that she called me.

This is the reason I blog. This is the reason I post this stuff on Facebook...for all of us moms who just need someone to TALK to, to share our fears with...with people who understand. Not everyone gets how devastating a stomach illness can be for a diabetic child, but we do. Not everyone has an awesome support system of parents and friends who understand. Heck, some of us don't even have supportive doctors on our side.

But we can help each other. And we do, each and every day. I am so proud to be a part of this community.

Why can't every day look like this?

This is from today. It was so beautiful (even though I'm worried about him running so low from the stomach bug) I just had to photograph it. I have to confess...I've always been a bit jealous of the Dexcom graphs I see across the DOC. Mostly the ones of adult T1's, because theirs are always so...so...STEADY. Granted, a child's T1 is a different animal, what with hormones, and growing and carb & fruit snack-obsessed 4 year olds.

His appetite is coming back slowly...but he's nowhere near where he was before. I've hardly had to bolus him the last few days and in a way...it was kind of nice. 

So, until the roller-coaster wave of Adam's blood sugar returns, I'm going to sit back and enjoy the view of this steady one for the next few days.  

You know what they say about the best laid plans...

When we last heard from our fearless mama pancreas, she was counting down the minutes until her kid and diabetes-free weekend....one should know that diabetes always manages to fuck things up.

I have to say that we did manage to have a totally awesome day on Saturday. Pool time with margaritas, some window shopping, a fab dinner at a steakhouse with lots of cocktails, the movie Bridesmaids (which was so freaking hilarious that I needed my asthma inhaler - you must run out and see it!) then some blackjack with friends at the Talking Stick casino. We packed it in and I'm glad we did because little did I know that my poor mama was up with a puking Adam all night.

Bless her heart, she endured 3 puking sessions, bruised her tailbone after falling on the tile after slipping in his mess, plus taking care of Sydney, who was freaked out as well and couldn't sleep. She has earned her D-Nana badge. :) She called us at 8am to let us know what was going on, so we high-tailed it out of Scottsdale and back to Mesa. I just had a feeling this was not going to end well, and since I have read that so many diabetic kiddos with the stomach flu end up in the ER, I wanted to get to him fast.

Starting out, he had a BG of 90 and his ketones were 3.4. That freaked me out a bit, because since he was diagnosed, no matter how high he was, he's managed to avoid ketones. And he was totally unable to keep anything down. The last thing my mom tried was a popsicle that came right back up. I called our on-call endo, and he said to give him a 2.0 unit correction and try to get him to get any kind of sugar into his system. He said if he didn't improve within an hour, to head to the ER because the ketones are what we need to take care of.

We could not get him to eat/drink ANYTHING - poor kid was totally freaked out that he was going to puke again and Dex said his blood sugar was heading downtown to Chinatown...so I made the executive decision to just take him to the ER.

I have to admit, going to the ER with a diabetic kid is like having a Disney FastPass...they just swoosh you right in and into a room! And they have some stellar puke bags...I had a moment where I wanted to steal some to take home for later. :)

By now his BG was 50 and ketones were 3.5, so they got him hooked up to an IV drip with Dextrose, Zofran and saline right away. He was such trooper for the IV! The J-tip thing is awesome and honestly, you know what he was scared of? He was afraid the doctor was going to swab his throat for strep. LOL! He'd rather get an IV than that. My sweet, weirdo kiddo.

He was feeling pretty miserable, but we watched some Spongebob on the iPad and he took a little snooze. After a few hours, he tried some pudding and that stayed down and he had some Gatorade, but his BG was still dropping so, I asked that they give some more Dextrose. I have to admit, they were great about letting me be the "mama pancreas" and ask for what I'd like them to do. Before we were discharged, Adam was complaining of more stomach pain, and HE asked the doctor for more zofran in his IV! And by golly, the doctor did it. :)

He said, "Take a picture mama - and send it!" He was pretty proud of his IV hand. :)

We are home now, and while he perked up for a bit, he's back to feeling bad - mostly just stomach pain, but no more vomiting. I think he just feels pretty wiped out, and he keeps saying he's feeling "weird." And he's really scared he's going to throw up again. I hope he gets some good sleep tonight. I just tested his ketones and he's at 0.0, and his BG is steady at 150ish, so I'm good with that. I'm typing this from the floor of his bedroom, because he's scared to be alone.

I knew the stomach flu was inevitable, as was our first ER visit. It happens to every D kid at some point, I'm sure. I'm just surprised because neither one of my kids has ever had the stomach flu before! But hey, a first time for everything right? I'm so very glad we did not go OUT of town for our weekend and were able to get to him quickly.

Thanks to all my Facebook D-mamas for giving me great advice today. As we were driving to get Adam, my husband was asking me who I was texting...and I said, "I'm asking my D-mamas what to do!" He thought that was pretty cool...especially that I got so many responses so fast. So thank you, ladies! You rock. :)

I miss being carefree

I have been enjoying reading everyone's blogs this week! I knew I didn't have it in myself to commit to writing each day, but I sure am having fun reading yours. :)

I am tired. So, so tired. I think I'm just having a few moments where I miss not having to worry about things all the time. I've been consumed with worry about Adam starting kindergarten and meeting with teachers and nurses and frankly...the information I need to teach these people is overwhelming to me. I don't even know what I'm doing myself half of the time and I'm supposed to teach them?

Little things are bugging me. Stupid things, like seeing a mom open up a box of Teddy Grahams at Target and give the whole box to her kid so he can enjoy a snack while she shops. SO CAREFREE! I so miss that. I think the reason I've been snapping at my kids when they ask me for something to eat lately is that it's just so much damn work to get it all ready for Adam.

My husband and I are lucky enough to be getting away for the weekend (here in town...but away from home!) for the first time in 2 years. Last time I was worried about leaving our kids for the first time all weekend, but now with diabetes in the mix, it's a whole other host of problems. I'm trying to get everything ready for my mom and I'm sitting here, amazed at what is involved for me to go away for 2 days. I don't resent it, because it is what it is...there is no changing it. But I do wish things could be a little bit easier sometimes, ya know? I know my mom will do a great job, but now I worry about HER worrying about Adam. I hate burdening people!

Mini-Glucagon Saves the Day

We got to crack open our first red box tonight. And thanks to Reyna, Hallie and the rest of the DOC, we knew what to do.

I'm not quite sure what happened. I know he was pretty active today and when my husband took him out for dinner, he ate about 100 carbs worth of food, so he dosed him for it.

Then came the impromptu dance party in the living room followed by a warm bath and a site change. Maybe the activity combined with the rapid insulin absorption from the warm bath made things crazy? Who knows.

Upon checking his blood sugar after the site change, I realized he was at 130 with 3 units on board.

My husband and I looked at each other with our "Oh Shit" faces. Of COURSE we were out of juice (bad diabetic mommy) so he ran to the store while I gave him 23 carbs worth of chocolate.

After that and one juice box, he was 82. It was way past his bedtime and he was falling asleep on us, so we forced one more juice box down him plus 2 glucose tabs. He refused to eat or drink any more after this.

Fifteen minutes later he was sound asleep and his blood sugar was 68.

Double Shit.

Thanks to the DOC, I knew that mini-glucagon dosing would probably be appropriate in this situation. (right? did I do the right thing?) He wasn't going to eat or drink anymore, he wouldn't wake up (not unconscious, just ridiculously tired) and his BG was going to keep dropping due to the insulin on board.

My husband got a syringe (and now like Hallie suggested, I'll always have a U-30 syringe rubber-banded to the box because I had to dig in our cabinet for the box of syringes) and I looked up the protocol for the mini-glucagon dosing. We swirled our powder, and drew up 5 units (since he's 5 years old) and went upstairs with Jason using my new flashlight app on my phone as light (thanks, Heidi!) and injected it into his leg. He said "ow" and stayed asleep.

Fifteen minutes later he was 141. And just now he was 208. Edited to add that it's 11pm now, and he's sitting at 200-ish. I am now very, very fond of the mini-glucagon protocol!

Whew.

Thank you, DOC. I don't know what we'd do without you. I seriously would have panicked and freaked out if it weren't for all of you and what you share with this community. ((Hugs))