It has been a long time since I wrote anything. April 12 was Nathanael's 3 year diaversary. I can't believe that it has been 3 years. Some days it seems like we have been doing this forever and other days we are just newly diagnosed. We have learned so much. The one thing we have learned is that diabetes doesn't play fair. Diabetes requires constant managing and monitoring. We can do the exact same thing every day and get a different outcome. I ask a lot of questions, What did you do different? What did you eat? How much insulin do you have left in your pump? How can you be low, you just ate? How many carbs are you eating? Did you bolus? How much active do you have? These are all questions that I never even thought of 3 years ago. 3 years ago I never asked my son if he was high or low. Now this is just our standard conversation.
I tell my son how lucky he is to have a mom feed him starbursts in the middle of the night to treat a low. How many other kids have parents feed them candy in the middle of the night? Too many. Too many kids depend on their caregivers to be their pancreas. Too many caregivers worry if their child will be safe during the night.
We have been very fortunate to not have too many scary events with diabetes. Nathanael has high days and lows at night. We are always able to get him back under control. This past week we had a very scary night. This was the first time that my fears were starting to come true. I test him at 10:30 pm before I go to bed, he is 60. I grab the starbursts that are by his bed and start feeding him. Wait and test, lower. I run up stairs to get more stuff. Feed, wait, test, lower. Temp basal pump, Run, up stairs, get something different, feed, wait, test, lower. Now my son is starting to ask for the glucagon, which we have never had to use. Test again, this time going into the 30's and dropping fast. I have the glucagon now by the bed but refuse to use it, keep feeding him carbs, 7up, liquid glucose shots, glucose tablets, Capri sun, starbursts. Finally start to rise. Finally after an hour. He's asleep, I go to bed. Test him in an hour, 126. With the amount of candy he had, should be good for the rest of the night, wrong. 2:30 test time, back down to 59. Run up stairs, grab Capri Sun, another can if 7 up, more starbursts, liquid glucose shot and back down stairs. At this point, Nathanael takes his pump off completely. He says he is done with his pump for the night. Feed, wait, test, lower. Feed more, wait, test, starting to rise. Finally back above 100. I pray he stays there. Alarm set to test again in 45 minutes. At 4 am his number is finally 250. I put his pump back on and go back to bed. When I tested him after my shower, his number had come down about 20 points. So glad that was over. I'm so glad I decided to test him at 10:30. Lord knows what would have happened to him. He was clearly scared. He didn't want to go to sleep. He was begging me to stay home from work on Thursday and him stay home from school. He has never been so scared and if he has been, he has never said anything.
The next day he had a track meet. He is a thrower. His number stayed relatively low all day. It was very warm as well. I watched him warm up with his team. I was concerned about how his blood sugar was. He always tells me, it's fine. He was getting ready to throw the javelin and I had him test. This was the first time I was able to get him to test. He was in the 70's. So he eats some starbursts and a granola bar. He tests again and his number was higher. He performs his best when his blood sugar is between 120-150. He completes the javelin. He was able to throw it 80 feet. Not his best but I'm still very proud of him. In between events, he wanted some food. So he got a hot dog. We looked up the carbs on the bun wrapper. He tests and take insulin. Just what he is supposed to do. Within 15 minutes he was dropping. And dropping fast. After 3 liquid glucose shots, numerous starbursts, and a regular Pepsi, his number started to come up. He decided that he didn't feel comfortable throwing discus so he withdrew from the event. There will be other track meets. I don't usually allow diabetes to control what he does. But after the previous 20 hours, I respected his decision. I have no idea why his blood sugar wouldn't stay up. Part of the reason was the heat and his exercising. The only thing I can assume is that he had changed sites Wednesday evening and he was getting really good absorption. After camp last summer he starting using the back of his arms. He numbers have been much better there.
If I have learned one thing, is there is no standard. You can do what you were trained to do and diabetes will do what it wants to do. Diabetes isn't like other illnesses where you take a pill and get better or you take the same dose every day and you get the desired outcome. It changes from day to day. All I can pray for is one day there will be a cure.
