Thursday, March 02, 2006

Thank you, Anderson Cooper


I always fall asleep with the tv on. Last night was no exception. Something on Anderson Cooper, 360 woke me up at 1 a.m., so I got out of bed to check O's bg. Good thing I did, because she was completely out of insulin and was 283. It's really not a lot of fun to change a cartridge at 1 a.m. when it's cold and all I'm wearing is a t-shirt and undies and I have to pee like a racehorse. Wrestling with a dead-asleep, 5' tall girl isn't a walk in the park either. She kept swatting at me and muttering "Stop it, leave me alone, what are you doing?" and trying to wrap herself back up in the duvet. Finally got it changed and bolused her for the high. I added a .2 to her bolus, which is probably why she woke up at 71 this morning. Whoops. Not too low, but she's been running high for a week and the extra bolus plus the basal rate changes I made the night before probably combined to push her down a bit.

She's back to not entering her bg when she eats. It's driving me nuts. She's got a counselling appointment today and I'm going to bring that up, but I don't know if this woman is familiar with the ins and outs of diabetes care, so I may have to call Joslin about it. Again. I don't know how to fix this, short of taking away her pump, but if I do that, then I really won't be able to tell if she checks and boluses for food or not. At least when she just boluses, there's a record of it, proof that she's not checking.

I talked to her about coming to the Pre-Union on the 11th and she wanted to go, rather than go to her dad's for the whole weekend. Heh. I didn't say anything, but inside, I was doing the little end zone dance.

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In other news: I signed my life over to the bank on Tuesday. But I own a house now. Well, the bank owns it, but y'know. It's mine. And there's not a burnt orange, sculpted rug in sight. I cannot wait to move. One more week. One more week.

AND! Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire comes out on DVD on Tuesday. Yay!!

7 comments:

floreksa said...

Hey Julia -

See you mentioned Joslin. Figuring you must be in my "neck of the woods" (I'm in western MA). If so, there's a great group of mom's with T1 kids on pumps. Most are a little younger then O, I think, but its a great group that meets 1x a month (I'm the loner adult with D amoung them LOL).

If you'ld like more info just let me know.

art-sweet said...

Julia -

Congrats on the house! That's awesome! Is your hand worn out from signing? I can't make it to the PreUnion but am hoping to meet some Boston bloggers when I'm in town for a conference in May.

As far as O goes - things I wish my parents had said to me:

I know it sucks to have to test your blood sugar at school/when you're with your friends/any time. No, but you really oughta shoulda. Just, IT SUCKS NOT TO BE ABLE TO BE A NORMAL KID.

I'm so proud of you FOR testing even when the numbers aren't where you want them to be.

You are so much more than the sum of your sugars. This disease is something WE have to control so that YOU get a chance to shine.

I think I will post these on my blog and see if any other T1s have words of wisdom to add.

Some possible technical solutions: If entering the sugar into the pump is the problem, can you get one of these pump/meter combos? Or just download the meter memory so that you have the readings?

Or... deep breath here - let her have a little freedom from the tyranny of diabetes for a while? It depends on how well her control is holding up when she doesn't do things exactly as you want, but if you remember the misery of being a preteen, an AIC that's .5 or even 1 point higher may be a small price to pay for feeling like a normal kid at a particularly agonizing moment in time.

Major Bedhead said...

Sarah - I know that group! I've been to a couple of meets and I'm moving to the town that Deb P. lives in. How cool!

art-sweet - Yes. My calluses have calluses. THanks for the ideas of what to say to O. I try not to get angry with her when she does this, but I do try to make her see that it's important to check. She does have the Minimed with the BD meter that talks to the pump, so I think she's just not checking, period.

I'm hesitant to let her take a break because she's the type of kid who would just run with it and stop checking at all. But I will re-emphasize how much it sucks to have to do all this. Her a1C is already pretty awful because of the joys of puberty in addition to the no checking thing, and I'm not willing to let it get even higher. Her last one was an 8.2% - down from an 8.9%, but still way too high.

floreksa said...

How cool is that!!!! I missed the last couple of meetings because Ally's been sick, but I was up at Magic Wings a few weeks ago.

I live about 10 minutes from Deb in the next town over.

Major Bedhead said...

I was at Magic Wings!

Erica said...

Congrats on the house!!

And hopefully, one way or another, there is some kind of resolution for the no-checking thing... It's so easy to take (or not take) responsibility for taking care of ourselves as adults. I can't imagine how it must feel to be the one taking care of a not-so-much-of a-child with this disease and navigating the letting go and giving over of that care. Good luck and great job so far :-)

P.S. Yeah Harry!

Joke said...

Yay...HP4!

-J., easily cheered.