3:30am Wake Up Call

As a parent, you know when someone is in your room, you can just feel them there. But you're not really awake, something just tells you that you have company. I thought I heard a little person in our room in the wee hours of the morning, but they were visiting the other side of the bed. Speedo's side. This is the side the little people go to if they want to come in our bed at night. They know I'll most likely bring them back in their room for a quick tuck in and "shhh, go back to bed..." so they visit their Daddy. Speedo, on the other hand, welcomes them in by rolling over so they have room, or hoisting them over him so they can fit snuggly in between us.

Moments after the feeling of company, but no bed movement following, Speedo is grabbing my leg waking me.

Betsey is sick. She's in the bathroom. Her little sister had heard her calling us ever so faintly from down the hall using all the energy she had. That girl hears everything when she is sleeping. She hears spiders moving on her walls.

I run into the bathroom from a completely deep sleep. It's that time of the morning where I tend to be a heavy sleeper....the hour before the alarm sounds for me to get up and get going.

In my sleepy, harried state, I try to wake up to pull it together, knowing we have a diabetes crisis. OK. Let's test, I say. Did you test yet? She says no. Her head is in her hands, she is whimpering. The DB is in her room. I ask Speedo to get the array of supplies we'll be needed to remedy this inevitable bout of ketones. I grab the DB to test her. She is 489!!! Failed site. Site change was yesterday....1 day overdue and it failed. Darn it!

We pull out the old site, get a new one in her and I give her a shot of insulin in her arm and allow the pump to give her the suggested dose. I put a temp rate on for 2 hours, 200%. That's alotta insulin!

Then she starts throwing up. Of course she does. Darn it again! Her ketone test strips showed moderate to large! Ugh.

I got about 20 minutes of sleep between the time Bets went back to bed and my alarm sounded for the beginning of my day. I tippy-toed into her room to test her again to see where she was at before I headed out to run. 401 and she feels sick again. I hate ketones. Hate them.

Just when things kind of coast along with diabetes, when you fall into a pattern where things are good, you kind of let your guard down a bit, then WHAM! Always. It's inevitable. I remember one time when things were going really well, I'm talking maybe 2 months of good stuff. Almost like Betsey was just doing it like every other healthy kid. Sure enough, we got a doozy. We had to break out the glucagon. The dreaded glucagon.

When the hospital explained to us what the glucagon was and when I explain it to others that have to have it with them in the event they are with Betsey for an extended period of time, it makes me and them shudder.

("Here is the glucagon. Use this if Betsey falls into a coma or passes out, but call 911 first....then call me. You OK with that?")

(picture from childrenwithdiabetes.com)

The glucagon comes in a red case. It holds a syringe prefilled with liquid and a vial containing powdered glucagon. You mix it right before you'll need to use it. It is used to bring blood sugar up quickly in a diabetic who is having a severe case of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) ultimately to save their life.

It was around Easter time, and for dessert the little people were having those delicious mini cadbury eggs. Betsey had eaten her dinner and had insulin running through her from that, and then bolused for the sugary sweet dessert. She didn't eat more than 5 of those eggs when she said out of the blue that she felt sick. She barely made it to the garbage can. It was the dreaded tummy bug!! She had so much insulin from dinner running through her and was throwing up all the food she had just consumed. We took the pump off to stop delivery. It didn't help. About an hour later, she was on the couch, pale and her numbers were constantly dipping. From the 80's, 70's - one of the last ones was a 40-something. I tried to wipe sugar on her lips, feed her canned peach syrup, honey, life savors.... nothing worked; she couldn't keep anything down. Finally I called Yale back and they said, "It's time for the glucagon."

That was one of the harder things for Speedo and me. I don't know why. That glucagon in it's red case is just such an emergency thing, a last resort. I had Yale stay on the phone to walk me through it for support. We ended up bringing Betsey to the ER and they gave her an anti nausea, IV fluids and eventually, after a long night, we went home in the early hours of the morning with her sugars stabilized.

Betsey is still home today. A quick check a minute ago, 83 and feeling a bit better. All that insulin is going to catch up and it's going to be a crazy fluctuating day, I can feel it.