Saturday, May 21, 2011

Dandelions, frogs, and heart attacks

So today started out in typical Amy fashion...I woke up 20 minutes before school starts. I have no idea how, but I managed to get Emma to school as the bell was ringing for the kids to go in. Whew! The rest of the day turned put to be pretty amazing actually. I was beginning to gain the teeniest bit of confidence with my pumping abilities, the sun was shining down on me warming my soul and making me feel like I actually could make it through this transition period to the pump virtually unscathed. I went to pick Emma up from school at lunch time and one of the other Mom's there waiting for her son had walked around the back field and picked a bunch of dandelions and tied them together to make a dandelion princess crown for Emma to wear when she came out. She loved it and pretended to be a princess.
All was going well in the land of new pumpers until after supper. Emma and I decided to go visit some friends that live up the street for a little bit. We were there for probably an hour and a half tops. When it was time to go, I told Emma I wanted to check her blood sugar just to make sure things were going smoothly. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw that Animas Ping remote meter count down from 5 and give me a reading of 23.1!!!! WTF??? So, I remained calm in front of our friends and gave her a correction bolus. We walked home and roughly 30 minutes later I checked her again so I could see if she had come down at all and so I could give her her bed time snack. Well, once again that traitor meter told me that she was now 26!! (I just now remembered that some of you that read my blog are in the States and may not know this, but to get the blood sugar number you are familiar with...just multiply my number by 18. I know...super convenient...it would make life so much easier if it was multiply it by like 10 or something! crazy Canadians and their crazy numbers!) So, I gave her another correction and paged the nurse, even though she is on holiday right now. She brought her work pager home with her though and told me to call daily with numbers to help me make adjustments to basals and stuff. So....there I sat...wondering what the hell was going on. Was she getting sick? Was the pump malfunctioning? Should I give her an injection? Change the site? ughhh...my mind was racing...I was lost. I felt totally and completely out of control....diabetes was controlling things...diabetes had given me a roundhouse kick to the jaw in our UFC match (which has been going on for nearly 3 years now...that's alot of rounds of fighting! Somebody ding the bell announcing a cure already!) and I was falling to the mat in slow-motion...just like in the Rocky movies. (Rocky #4 is one of my favorite movies, by the way...I know...dork...lol)
Well, to make an EXTREMELY long story short...or semi-short I guess at this point...I had to give her a site change...without using the numbing cream..still play/pausing my helpful Animas DVD..and shedding a few tears of my own...seeing the hurt and worry in Emma's big brown eyes...and feeling like a failure.

Now, here I am waiting it out till 2:00 in the morning...to check and see if she is ok. The nurse told me that if she is under 10.0 then i am to either set a temp basal...or give her 10g of carbs to get her through the night. If she is climbing back up again, then that means there is something wrong with my site change and I will need to do a new one and continue checking her. Fabulous. I was under the impression I would be able to sleep tonight. Not likely. So, here's to hoping I don't have to do a site change! Here's to hoping she will be ok! Here's to hoping I will one day sleep again! and here's to hoping that I will not have a heart attack before the age of 35 due to diabetes/pump worry and stress.

By the way, here is a picture of the giant froggie too....he is super cute

5 comments:

  1. So scary! Keeping you and Emma in my thoughts! I'm hoping she's okay, pumping gets easier and you get some sleep!

    ReplyDelete
  2. OH MY FRIEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    You're doing great. I hope things settle soon.

    That frog is aweseome!

    ReplyDelete
  3. :) Keep it up. Sounds like you are so on this pump thing...and the Frog is ADORABLE.

    P.S. She rocked the princess crown.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I thought I was the only one that was going to have a worry heart attack by 30 ugh, keep it up! Hopefully we both get sleep tonight! :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love that crown first of all, it's awesome! You guys are awesome :)

    ReplyDelete