Things I learned about Diabetes this month... June edition

- Furniture shopping with Elise will make her BG go low during the night. I can't remember how many nights we were out looking at sofa after sofa... but every night that we did, we had a long night of crashing blood sugars ahead of us. Let that be a lesson to all future furniture shoppers out there...

- My child knows how to check her own BG. I didn't know this until a few weeks ago until I went to check her and she grabbed the lancet out of my hand proclaiming, "I do it!" She then proceeded to correctly do everything she needed to, in the right order. She still has a bit of trouble lining up the test strip with her finger to get it to suck up her blood, but it's pretty good for a not-quite 3 year old. She loves to ask what the number says, and then asks if that's good. Awwwww, so sweet.

- Diabetes affects ALL areas of our lives. Everything we do is influenced by the disease. I can't think of one single area that we don't have to take diabetes into consideration. For example:

• When I put together a weekly menu, I try to make sure each dinner is pretty balanced and doesn't have too many high-carb items in one meal. Or that we don't eat things that send Elise's BG into the stratosphere two nights in a row.

• When we go out, do we have enough supplies? Food? Change of clothes and underwear in case her BG is high and she has an accident? Enough emergency snacks in case her BG goes low? How much food we bring is often determined by how much activity Elise will be doing.

• When we get Elise a water from a restaurant, should we be worried that it goes through the same fountain that full-sugared pop does? Have no idea what I'm talking about? Read this.
  
  
• Simple things like Elise riding her bike entails a BG check first, maybe a snack, and a check afterwards. She can't just be a kid and go off on a bike ride on a whim. That sucks.
  

There are so many more examples, but most of you already know them. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Diabetes is always on my mind and I hate it.

- If we don't get Elise on a CGM soon, Fred and I will not live to see our 40s; having either died from sleep deprivation or killing each other. Okay, that last part about killing each other was a joke, but lately we've been getting about 2 -4 hours of sleep a night and we are so completely exhausted that tempers are a wee bit short these days. Elise's BG does funny things at night and is completely unpredictable. Some nights it won't go above 100 no matter how many carbs we give her. Other nights if her number is below 80 at midnight and we give her a few carbs, she skyrockets into the high 200s by morning. We even had one night where she hovered at 90 all stinkin' night. We didn't give her any carbs, but still felt we needed to check her almost every hour to make sure she wasn't dropping. I need sleep and I need it soon. Thankfully, our CGM trial is just around the corner.