Why I love the DOC

Is it weird that I feel closer to the people living in my computer than some of the real live breathing people in my life?

Maybe it's because you get me.

Maybe it's because we live very similar lives.

I know it's because you guys have my back no matter what happens.

When Eileen gasped her final beep on Friday night, I had resigned myself to the fact that we had to wait 4 rather long days for a replacement. That's when Carrie swooped in and saved the day.

If you haven't met Carrie yet, you should head on over to her blog. Her now 2 year old son was dx about 6 months ago. Before last night, we had never met, just exchanged an email or two. When she read my post about our CGM kicking the bucket, she sent me an email saying we could use an extra receiver they happened to have. They live about 20 minutes from us, so I hopped in the car to get it.

So now we are up and running until we receive our replacement on Tuesday, and I am so thankful. I know we could have made do without it... we lived with D for almost two years before Eileen came along.

But I liken it to being blind. And then for a glorious period of time you are able to see, and you are amazed at everything you've been missing. And then, without warning, your sight is taken away from you, and while you lived before without being able to see, you know know what it's like to have sight, and you miss it terribly.

That 24+ hour period without Eileen was hard. Static numbers are hard. Not knowing is hard. Thanks to Carrie and John for making it easier for us!

Please come back to us Eileen

She was only with us a few short months, but we quickly came to love and depend on Eileen. She was our eyes when we couldn't see. Our ears when we couldn't hear. And saved our butts more times than I can count. Sure her whining grew tiresome at times, especially in the middle of the night. But as scarce as sleep is around here, I would give up a week's worth just to see her arrows and numbers once again.

Eileen left us tonight at 9:23 pm CST admidst beeps and shutdowns and failure messages. She gave us one final message: Err Code: 16R0F2D93c. I just wish I knew what it meant.

Okay, I'm sort of trying to be funny here, but this really, really sucks. And because I seemed to have pissed off the universe in some way, Dexcom shipping is shut down for the weekend and they won't be able to send us a new receiver until Tuesday.

I foresee a lot of sleepless nights in our future...

Here we go again

As most of you know, Elise is on diluted insulin for her fast-acting. Her dosage is enough that we can switch to full-strength, but each of the two times we've done it, it has been a disaster.

We currently dilute her insulin to U-20 (which means there is 5 units of diluent to 1 unit of insulin, or 10 units of the diluted stuff = 2 units of full-strength). Right now, Elise takes 11 units of DH at each meal, which in theory means she should get a dose of 2 (well, 2.2) units of full-strength.

Both times we've tried to switch , we have the exact same problem... her numbers seem fine at first, actually on the low side of normal. Then, they go up, and up, and up until they're in the high 400s. The more insulin we give, the higher she goes. Which is totally backwards, right?

Our theory is that the full-strength stuff is just still too strong for her (the first time we did this, we started out with a dose that was below what she should be getting). We think that her liver might be kicking out extra glucose because of the strength of the insulin. This, of course, is our non-medical opinion... call it an instinct. The NP we saw at our endo appointment yesterday thinks it's more likely that she's going low, then rebounding. My gut says no, just because I think we would have caught a low, since we test her so much.

But our NP encouraged us to try again, especially since she wears a CGM and we'll be able to see what happens. So today is the first day... right now she's out with Fred at a local farm festival where they have a petting zoo, pony rides, hay rides, and lots of open space to run around. I'm VERY curious to see what happens!

And if we get weird results again, we have to go ahead to give her a less-diluted dose of insulin (this was the wonderful Meri's idea!), like U-60 instead of U-20. The idea is to ween her off the diluted stuff. The NP wasn't too excited about the idea, but he checked with Dr. T (Elise's endo), who gave us the green light. So at least we have a back-up plan!

So here's hoping that it works! To end this post, I have a picture of the lovely Eileen; who is displaying 6 hours of absolutely bea-u-tiful numbers. The best part? These numbers are after Elise had ice cream for dessert at lunch and pizza for dinner. That's not usual around here, but yesterday was just a pizza and ice cream kind of day!

Shut up Eileen!

Dear Eileen,

I love you. I really, really do... but you are kind of pissing me off today. Both my babies are napping and all I want to do is sit on my nice cushy bum, and catch up on some blogs.

You know, while eating my bon-bons and watching my stories.

But for some hostile reason, you think it's okay to beep "LOW" every 10 - 15 minutes, making me get up, run upstairs and hit the "OK" button.

If Elise really WAS low, I'd be ever-so-thankful. But she's hovering right around 100; dipping below every other update or so, which in turn, sets you off. Showing me that she's 99 with a flat arrow really doesn't do much for me. Then, she hops over the 100 mark, only to dive back to 96 (again, with the flat arrow), causing you to grumble (vibrate) and shriek (beep) at me some more.

So Eileen... please to shut up. Unless you have some real news, just sit quietly on Elise's shelf like a good little CGM.

Love,

Elise's pseudo-pancreas

P.S. I guess I should offer my begrudging thanks for alerting me to Elise's nasty low during her nap yesterday. I suppose I can forgive this little transgression today.

P.P.S. You know I really do love you right? Sorry I'm such a cranky pants.

That's nice to see!

I'm trying to upload some pictures of the birthday party, but blogger is giving me grief this morning. I did, however, manage to upload this picture of Eileen looking quite beautiful this morning. Except for one dip into the 80s last night (when we gave her 7g), this is pretty representative of Elise's numbers from overnight.

Of course, now that I've blogged about it, it's all over... isn't it?

Diabetes gave me a birthday present

Or at least that's how I'm looking at it.

Yesterday I decided to choose one of those hibachi Japanese restaurants for my birthday dinner. I think the baby was craving some dinnertime entertainment to go along with our food.

Before we left the house, we checked Elise's BG... 95. Wow, she was 299 when she went down for her nap at 2:30, that was a pretty big drop in two hours. Happy with her pre-dinner number, we made the 15 minute drive to the restaurant.

It's 5:00, so we (along with the rest of the 65 years and up crowd) sit down and wait for the food to start flying. We gave Elise her insulin, and our food started to arrive.

I nervously watched Eileen, just waiting for those darn double arrows and numbers in the high 200s that have been showing up lately towards the end of dinner.

Elise happily had some soup, salad, zucchini, brown rice and steak, along with her milk and some cantaloupe for dessert. The entire time Eileen sat there with a flat arrow (meaning stable BG), and didn't go any higher than 120. The whole freaking evening. I was so happy that when the waiters had me stand up so they could sing me the birthday song, I did a little dance... pregnant belly and all.

I thought for sure by bedtime, her BG would start to shoot up, ruining the chance for Elise to have some cake with her snack, but a finger poke showed 109. Awesome!

Then I was CERTAIN that the cake, combined with the new, lowered dose of NPH, would shoot her to the moon overnight. But overnight checks proved me wrong. By midnight she was 158 and hovered there pretty much all night long, waking up at 159 this morning.

Thank you diabetes... and Happy Birthday to me. It's the smallest things that can make all the difference in the world.

Tired

I'm tired. And yeah, I know I'm preaching to the choir on this one... but I never thought it was possible to be physically exhausted to the point of wanting to throw up.

We've had a bad couple of nights lately. Lots of lows. Eileen buzzing and alarming. Elise's blood sugar keeps dropping into the 60s overnight. We give her carbs only to have her drop about an hour later. I guess it's time to lower her nighttime NPH.

Again.

If I had to estimate, I'd say I'm probably getting about 2 hours of sleep a night. Unfortunately, it's not all at the same time. I might fall asleep for 15 minutes, then I need to pee. Or after 30 minutes of shut-eye, Eileen warns us that Elise is dropping. Or after a mere 5 minutes, my back is complaining that I need to roll over. Or my husband starts to snore (if he's not using his CPAP machine). Or if he is, it starts to make too much noise. Or. Or. Or.

And it's starting to affect me mentally, physically and emotionally. I have tons of examples, but I will spare you from the boring minutiae of my day-to-day life. I will say this, I pity anyone who dares be rude to me, cut me off in traffic, or look at me the wrong way. We have an expression around here and it's called the "WOJ".

And it stands for the Wrath of Joanne. Woe to anyone who wrongs me in my increasingly fragile mental state. I am exhausted. I am 9 months pregnant. I am hormonal.

You have been warned.

Cuddle Time

This is what I saw when I walked into Elise's room at about 11:30 pm the other night. She was snuggled up with her CGM pal, Eileen. Awwwww, how cute, right?

Except that when I grabbed the receiver to see what her number was, and saw the "grey box of death". Yup, my darling not-quite-three-year-old has figured out how to stop the sensor. Greeeeeat.

It made for a very long night.

Mom-tuition strikes again

I've talked about it before... those little voices in your head that start to natter at you when something is up. When it comes to all things diabetes, I've named those voices Lenny and Harold.

Last night Lenny and Harold decided to wake me up about 12:30 am; a mere 45 minutes after I'd fallen asleep. I think Mattias had gotten in on the act by kicking my bladder. Lenny and Harold really, really wanted me to go check on Elise... even though I had been in there an hour before and Eileen (CGM) told me that Elise's BG was at 135 and heading up.

But Lenny and Harold threatened me with a duet of "Do You Think I'm Sexy" - the lounge version - so down the hall I went, only to find Eileen telling me that Elise was 112 with double arrows down. A quick finger check told me she was 93.

(double arrows down on Dexcom means that the person's BG is falling at a rate of 2 -3 every minute - meaning in a mere 10 minutes, Elise's BG could fall from 93 to 63).

Thankfully, I know that Eileen would have chimed in at some point and alerted me to the low, but it was nice to catch it before it happened. After 8g, Elise went back up and hovered around the 110 - 140 mark all night; waking up at 125.

Lenny. Harold. I don't know how you do it, but keep on doing what you're doing.

What's going on?

It's been a weird, wild and wacky couple of days. Starting with the night my husband fell down the stairs and Elise puked.

The next day (Thursday) she woke up at 179. We did everything as we normally would, except about an hour after Elise ate her breakfast, she said she didn't feel so good. Eileen says everything is A-okay in the mid-100s, but a quick finger poke says 132.

Did you catch the part where this is one hour post-meal? Yeah, she should be MUCH higher than that. Except she wasn't.

I calibrate Eileen and head off to open gym. When we get there, Eileen starts beeping her head off. Quick poke... 48! Crap-on-a-stick! To make a long story short, it takes 33g EXTRA (on top of her 15g snack and 25g lunch) to get her above 80. Her post-lunch number is 108. I give her a pre-nap snack, thank God for Eileen and put Elise down for her nap. Everything is great until right at 3:00, when BAM, her BG shoots up to 310. I guess all those extra carbs caught up to her.

Fast forward to today. Elise and I are so, very excited because we're meeting Tracy and Matthew for lunch. Elise wakes up with a bg of 174, and again we do everything as we normally would. About one hour after breakfast, Eileen starts screaming LOW again. Finger poke... 48. Crap-on-a-stick and holy déjà vu!

I start stuffing Elise with carbs and head off to lunch after I get her BG up enough. Another long story short... today it takes 50g of extra carbs (on top of lunch and snack), and she never gets any higher than 99 (pre-nap number).

Because of what happened yesterday, I'm a bit leery about giving her a snack before her nap, but I do anyway. All is well until I walk into her room to check out her CGM. I notice a smell. A very bad smell. Elise has thrown up all over her bed, and is sleeping in it. Oh. Dear. Lord.

At this point she's only been asleep for about 30 minutes, so I do what will surely get me nominated for Worst Mother in the World... I let her continue to sleep in a puddle of her own vomit. My reasoning is this... better she be covered in vomit and well-rested, than covered in vomit and cranky. Right? Can I get a holla? Anyone?

All this to say, aside from meeting Tracy and Matthew, it's been a pretty sucktastic day. Elise has been amazing through all of this. The weird thing is, she's not acting sick. She's her usual sunny self. She has no fever, no ketones... just these crazy low blood sugars, throwing up, and just for fun; a few bouts of diarrhea. Thankfully, she has an appetite and will eat and drink, although we've drastically reduced her insulin amounts until whatever this is has run it's course.

I'd be remiss if I didn't add how much fun it was to meet Tracy and her AMAZING son Matthew. I was wondering how the dynamic of a 3 year old girl and 9 year old boy would work, but Matthew was so sweet with Elise, and she stuck to him like glue the entire time. I think her hero-worship started when she saw Matthew do his shot at lunch all by himself.

Tracy was so much fun to chat with, and I am so glad she made the long drive over my way to meet up. Thanks guys for bringing some fun into an otherwise Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day!

Chronicle of a long night

9:40 pm
As Fred is loading the dishwasher, he tells me we are out of dishwasher cleaner. Oh no, there is no way we're going to hand wash those puppies at this late at night. I tell him I'll run to Target to get some and he makes some joke about not making it back anytime soon. Since Target is closing in 20 minutes, I let him know that I will be in, out and home in 15 minutes. I win. Go me.

11:00-ish pm.
Eileen calls us. Elise is 270 with double arrows up. We scratch our heads and wonder how this can be when all evening she barely made it above 100. We decide to see where things go.

12:55 am
One of my many potty breaks of the night. I decide since I'm up to go see what Eileen has to say. Nothing but question marks, something that had happened frequently throughout the day. Gee, thanks Eileen. I check Elise and she's at 144.

2:22 am
Eileen still has many questions, so we check Elise again. Crap, 72. With no way of knowing if she's heading up, down or holding steady; we decide to give her some banana.

2:25 am
Fred falls down the stairs while going to get the banana. I almost go into labour upon hearing the multiple thuds and following crash. Poor guy, I think he hurt his neck. And I discover I can still move pretty quickly for someone who is 8 months pregnant.

2:49 am
Eileen still has nothing to say, but a finger poke shows Elise is coming up and is now at 102.

4:11 am
Hello? Eileen? Fine, another poke... 152. Back to sleep for the remaining 3 hours.

4:30-ish am
Heard over the baby monitor: Cough, cough... BLURK!
Out of bed and down the hall to discover Elise has thrown up. So we strip the bed, check her temp (normal), check ketones (0.1), BG is fine. She claims that she feels okay, not sick at all. Well that's ONE piece of good news. Thankfully I washed her other sheets, and have a spare to put on the bed. I do not, however, have a spare mattress protector. Fingers are crossed that this is a one time event. Downstairs to put her sheets in the laundry.

8:00 am
Eileen STILL doesn't want to talk, but Elise's meter says 148. Yawn... did I sleep at all last night? Alright Thursday, let's do this...

Come on Eileen!

I am so, so happy to report that this second time was way better than the first. Elise handled the insertion like the rock star that she is. And two hours later, we are getting our first set of readings... 170 and holding steady pre-nap. That's what I like to see!

Sensor insertion... she didn't even cry!

Showing off her sensor (yes we used the leg again... it's really the only place she has any fat)

Her prize for doing so well... Belle!

To say I'm excited is an understatement. Elise was even pretty pleased about the whole thing.

♫ Remember Toora Loora Toora Loo-Rye-Aye ♫
♫ Eileen I'll hum this tune forever ♫.