Wednesday, August 18, 2010

A funny thing hapened on the way to good numbers....

Well, I was warned, and they were right.  Summer is definitely making it hard to keep up on the blog, but I just had to share this head scratching experience.

Almost a whole year into it now (wow I can't believe it's almost his anniversary) and I'm a lot more comfortable with keeping Jonathan in a tighter range; even though it means some nights I sleep in increments of minutes.  A couple of weeks ago as we were trying to figure out some crazy night time highs, one of the nurses at the clinic said something totally unexpected..... We were giving him too much insulin at dinner.

WTF????  Too much insulin = night time highs?  That's a little back-asswards I thought.

She asked us to back off on his dinner bolus by 1/2 unit and not correct through the night for a couple nights.  That was tough let me tell you... 15 (270), 16(288), 17(306)... It was hard to watch. Oddly enough though, he was getting breakfast numbers in the high single to low double digit range (144-198).  On the third night he was 8.4 two hours after dinner and 11 at four hours and steady through the night.  Too bizarre!

After much discussion, here's the working theory the team has....  I believe I've made mention before that Jonathan is non-symptomatic for hypoglycemia.  That is until he gets really low and then he goes into over-drive (adrenaline rush).  Well, our 2 hour numbers were more often in the 3 1/2 - 5 range (62-90), but we were OK with that because he'd climb back up and be fine at 4 hours.  As it turns out though, the near miss in the low triggered the adrenaline and that combined with carbs yet to be digested would send him sailing back into the teens and requiring one or more correction doses through the night.

So the strange "fact" (as much as anything D management can be a hard and fast fact) was that in Jonathan's case more insulin resulted in higher numbers and less resulted in lower.

How bizarre, how bizarre!



PS: 20 days to P day

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Big Brown Box

   It's here.  I have 5 weeks.  I have 5 weeks to learn everything I can about this pump and what it can do.  I have 5 weeks to prepare...  That's exactly 5 weeks longer than I had to prepare for Jonathan's diagnosis, so were ahead of the game in that way.  I do however have two thick books to read... aye carumba.  On the bright side in 5 weeks I won't do what I did tonight 73/17=4.3.... hmmm add 4g or random something, or lose .3 units (and in hindsight, I probably should have given him 1/2 a mini-box of smarties....

   Ok... off to school... have a gooD night.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

It's on it's way....

   We got the call last night.  The nice lady from Medtronics Canada called to let us know that Jonathan's shiny new pump was being shipped.  Odds are it's half way to Memphis by now.  I still find it silly that to get from Toronto to Windsor (400Km / 240mi) that it goes to Memphis first... silly FedEx...

   It's weird.  I was so reluctant to go pump just months ago, and now I find myself waking up in the middle of the night like it's Christmas eve.  Jonathan is excited too.  I don't think he fully understands all of the implications here, but he seems to be clear on one thing trade 12 needles for 1.  By the time he goes on the pump, he will have had well over 1500 shots, probably closer to 1600 or 1700.  Fast forward to September 2011... 122 infusion sets (maybe a few extra, nothing's perfect).  And when I need to give him 2.7 units of insulin, I can, I don't have to add extra food to get to 3.0 or short him 0.2.

   I'll admit it. I am scared about having to put the words kink and cannula is the same phrase.  I'm concerned about DKA and giving up long acting insulin, but on the other hand, he usually doesn't go more than 6 hours between tests (that's lunch to dinner) and we can add one in there!

   I'm not looking forward to the first couple of insertions and the first time we hit a vein.  But I am looking forward to taking him to Sunday brunch and not caring that the next meal may be a couple hours away.  I'm looking forward to letting hip sleep on Saturday morning instead of rushing him to the breakfast table because I know he has to eat lunch by 11:30 so we can get his sister to gymnastics.

   I'm not going to jinx it by publishing the reason there haven't been many D posts recently... but I'm sure we'll be talking a lot about Mi-me (maybe Jonathan can come up with a better one) in the coming weeks.