Still alive...

Just a quick note to say, yes... I am still alive.

This whole past week has really kicked my butt and I'm still trying to recover. My house looks like a garbage dump threw up in it, and my family just might resort to eating dog food if I don't get my act together.

I wonder how many carbs are in dog food?

Anyway, if you don't frequent my other blog, I wrote the whole sordid story about my mom and her hospital experience down in a post over there. Click here to read it.

Sorry for my continued silence and lack of participation on all of your blogs. I'm hoping to be back in the swing of things soon.

An update on my Mom

Just wanted to post a quick update on my Mom... her condition worsened to the point where she had to be admitted to the hospital. They're saying kidney infection (which is what we were saying the FIRST time we went to the ER, but the doc obviously did not listen).

She's still not feeling great, even after a night in the hospital. As of now, it's 12:30 pm and a doc STILL has not been by to see her. She hasn't received anymore antibiotics other than the ones she got yesterday around 5:00 pm, and all there doing is re-hydrating her and giving her pain meds. Nobody is telling her anything. It is so ridiculous, starting with our ER visit on Saturday, but that's for another post.

Elise and I are on our way back to the hospital now... time to start kicking someone in the groin.

And how was YOUR week?

You may have noticed it's been a bit quiet around here. Not for a lack of anything to say, because if you know me at all, I'm rarely at a loss for words.

But I'm seriously trying to recover from one of the most craptastic weeks I've had in awhile.

If you read my other blog, then you know on Monday that I had a not-so-fun experience of my car breaking down in the middle of a busy road. Over $500 later, she's as good as 10 years old again.

Then I started feeling sick. But I was keeping my chin up because my Mom was coming to visit on Wednesday. On Thursday, she started feeling bad (although she didn't 'fess up until Saturday morning). I should have known something was wrong on Thursday because she was asking me for Advil or Tylenol. My mom NEVER takes anything. In fact, just for her to admit that she's not feeling well must mean she's close to dying.

I started getting a little worried because it was presenting like the flu; chills (so bad that she couldn't hold the cup of tea I made for her), headache, body aches and her fever started on Saturday (she'd been having the other symptoms since Thursday). I finally told her at 10:00 on Saturday night that she needed to go to the ER.

So away we went and two hours later (plus a shot of toradol in the bum, some hydrocodone and Ibuprofen), we had a dx of a bladder infection. I've never seen someone so happy to have a bladder infection in my life! She was so afraid she had the flu and had passed it onto Elise.

And speaking of Elise, we are having the craziest highs ever. With some lows thrown in every once in awhile to keep us on our toes. She's been waking up in the mornings with a BG in the mid to upper 300s, mostly because we've been having to give her extra carbs around 9:30 the night before to combat lows. Also, she's teething. I think it's her molars. Which could also be contributing to the highs.

And Fred? Well, poor Fred has been having to deal with three cranky females.

Here's to a much better week... starting NOW!

Question

Calling all those wily D-veterans I count as friends... I have a question for you.

This morning we checked Elise's BG at around 4:30. It was 109. We were hesitant to give her anything, because all the insulin should have been out of her system by then (her shot of N was at 7:30 the night before, and NPH is generally gone by 9 hours).

So we checked her at 6:30 am, and she was down to 71. At which point we gave her some carbs. My question is; why did her BG falling with no active insulin?

Cool News Story

Our local FOX station had a neat story on tonight about a student that did a paper on diabetes. When his teacher read it, she realized her daughter had been having many of the symptoms that he listed in his paper. When she took her daughter to the doctor, her BG was in the 400s.

You can read the whole thing by clicking here.

The only thing that bugged me about the story is where the mom said a normal BG range was between 50 - 120. Fred emailed the reporter to let him know that 50 is considered a low BG.

But a cool story, nonetheless.

Edited to Add: I just got a comment saying how odd it was that the article never actually mentions the word diabetes... holy smokes, I never even noticed that! In the actual news story they do. How weird.

I had to go and say it

Rewind about seven hours ago. I'm chatting with the undisputed champ of the diabetes world, Meri, when she asked me how Elise's numbers have been.

I told her that it looked like things were stabilizing, and we had seen a trend towards some higher numbers. My thinking was Elise had gone through the mother-of-all growth spurts during the month of December and it made her BG totally freak out.

But lately all her numbers seemed to be following a trend, so we were pretty sure it was all over.

Until tonight. Check THIS out:

7:30 pm - 168
At 8:15 pm we give her her night time N.
8:45 pm - 15g carb snack plus nursing
9:30 pm - she asks for water, and some banana. BG is 48 (huh?) We give her 10g.
9:45 pm - BG is 57
10:00 pm - 62. We decide to give her 5g more.
10:15 pm - 68
10:30 pm - 76. Again, we decide to give her 5g more.

At this point, it is now way, way past Elise's bedtime, although she is being such a trooper about it and not complaining at all. So we just put her to bed with a BG of 76, knowing that in about an hour, the N should start to peak. Of course we choose tonight to up her dose by .5 because she had been waking up in the mid-200s.

I'm just wondering if at some point we're going to see a major BG spike because of the 20g extra carbs we gave her. Better that than crashing low I suppose.

Going to be a long night.

Edited to add: 11:30 pm - 111. Groan.

JDRF Awards Dinner

Thursday night was the JDRF Awards Dinner in our area, and even though it was FREEZING out, we donned our Team Elise shirts and had a fine time hanging with Laura and her family.

The dinner was held at the Frontiers of Flight Museum, which Elise LOVED... she is so into airplanes, and wanted to climb into every plane she saw. Maybe we have a little pilot on our hands!

We got to enjoy a dinner I didn't have to cook, heard some encouraging information about research that is going on, and Team Elise received an award for the money that we raised. All in all, a pretty good night. Here are some pics:

JDRF Ambassadors (plus Laura and I) up on stage. The MC was talking to Elise at this point, and Elise really wanted to talk into the mic

How cute are Elise and Nate?

After a doctor came and talked about his research the had the kids hold up letters spelling out "We ♥ Research". Isn't that the cutest A you've ever seen?

Laura's husband Jim trying to herd Nate to the front

The A seems to be running away

We have Nate, now where is Elise going?

Nate and Elise

How does exercise affect Elise?

A lot. Greatly. Loads. Huge. Plenty. Heaps. Mucho.

Like from 277 down to 185 in 30 minutes with no active insulin on board. After she climbed from 138 to 277 following her afternoon snack.

Now it's 12:30 am and her BG has been hovering around the 100 mark. Even her 15g snack at bedtime didn't budge her. And the extra carbs we gave to to try and nudge her up a bit aren't doing a freaking thing.

And I'm up blogging about it, for some insane reason. Do you have ANY idea how much I HATE this disease?

Of course you do. Because most of you have probably gone through something similar in the past few days.

All I have to say at this moment is, you can SUCK IT DIABETES!

Why I almost didn't make cookies this Christmas

I love to bake, mostly because I love to eat the end result of said baking, but I also enjoy the journey to those results. When I was pregnant with Elise, I had wonderful visions of the two of us, mixing it up in the kitchen and creating delicious concoctions to fatten Fred up with.

She would have her own little apron, and steal bits of cookie dough when she thought I wasn't looking. I would let her lick the beaters, and try hard not to scrape all the batter out of the bowl, so she could sample that, too.

So when she was diagnosed with diabetes at 12 months, that dream died for me. And it wasn't until this Christmas that I realized that I was still in mourning.

Elise's first Christmas with d, she was only 15 months. Too young to really get caught up in the wonder of the season. But this year was much, much different and she was on a constant diet of Santa, the tree, ornaments, stockings, and of course... presents. But the one thing lacking, was all the yummy Christmas treats that flow endlessly as the calendar marches towards December 25.

Fred and I always had the fun tradition of decorating a gingerbread house every Christmas. I would make all the pieces from scratch, and we would pile as much candy, cementing it to the house with royal icing, as we could.

But I told myself I was not going to do any baking this year. It just made me too sad to even try. And even if I did make something, how much of it could she even eat? And what would it do to her BG? She's so little, that one cookie would take up over half of her dinner carb amount.

So up until Dec. 23, I didn't do anything but grieve that little dream that I had held in my heart. Until I decided to shed my black clothing for something a little more festive.

A big deciding factor for me was the fact that Elise LOVES to help in the kitchen. When she sees me in the kitchen, she'll ask, "What making?" And then exclaim, "wanna help Momma!"

We bought her a little step-ladder that she pulls up beside me, and I give her her own cutting board, "knife" (a rounded spatula with no sharp edges), and some food that she can cut. I love how proud of herself she is when she "makes food".

So together my daughter and I made gingerbread cookies. And because I am who I am, I measured, weighed and calculated every carb that went into those cookies. And then I even weighed each cookie so I knew exactly how many carbs were in it.

And then we even decorated those cookies with a dab of royal icing and one M&M. And when I say dab, I mean the tiniest, most microscopic dab of icing you ever saw, because that stuff is potent. After helping myself to several scoops of it (while Elise wasn't looking, of course), I checked my BG about 30 minutes later and rang in at a whopping 168!

So what if my daughter didn't get to lick the bowl or the beater, or sneak bits of cookie dough behind my back? So what if it isn't exactly how I had pictured it in my head?Who cares that baking now takes a little more effort and hard work? It was totally worth it.

My daughter and I made cookies together. Even more than that; we made memories.

Things I've learned about about Diabetes this month... December edition

- This could be a post in of itself, but I learned that Christmas baking is something I need to do with Elise. I had told myself I wasn't going to do any (for various reasons that I will write about if I ever get the function back in my wrist), but a few days before the big day I changed my mind. And I'm glad I did.

-Always, always, ALWAYS carry back-up batteries for your scale in your purse/diaper bag... whatever. Just make sure you have them. Because you'll just look like an idiot banging the scale against the table, trying to get it to work. People already stare at us enough because we weigh Elise's food, I don't need to draw any more attention to ourselves.

- One of the worst things you can do is get too cocky. Just don't do it. Don't ever think, "I've got the hang of this, I'm cool. I can handle anything." Because D will pick that exact moment to rear it's butt-ugly head and laugh in your face. By the way diabetes, you need to do something about your breath. It stinks. In fact, YOU stink. Suck it.

-The good people (non-D) out there will change up their schedule to accommodate you. Friends of ours who invited us over for Christmas Day dinner did just that. They told us they usually eat at around 2:00 - 3:00 pm. Upon hearing this, we declined the invitation, and they said they would be happy to move it to a time that worked for us. We weren't the only guests they were having, their family from out of town would also be there. If you are reading this, and you are one of those non-D people, do you have ANY idea what that means to us? It is without a doubt, one of the nicest things you can do for a D-family... a gesture that says, "I don't completely understand, but I want to help however I can."

And yes, there are people that when they hear of certain needs to may have pertaining to the diabetes, they deem you difficult and would rather not hang out with you. Your loss, not mine.

-I know this disease is different for every child, but baths sure mess Elise's BG up. The other day we tested her right before and she was a cool 138 before going in (almost 3 hours post-DH). While in the bath, she started to complain about not feeling good, so we checked again... 86. This was only about 20 minutes after the previous check. Crazy.

Edited to add: I've had a few comments on the bath thing, so I thought I'd include why this can happen: When you take a hot shower or bath after an insulin shot, the heat can increase blood flow through the vessels in the skin. This can cause the insulin to be absorbed more quickly than usual.