Post-Thanksgiving Lows

We don't do Black Friday shopping, so today we slept in. I woke up at 8 to LOW on Dex. No alarm from Nightscout. Does it look like compression low? No. 

I rushed to his room. Didn't even wait to watch for breathing. Touched his arm. It was cold, so I rubbed it and he woke up. Huge sigh of relief. I looked at the receiver and the sensor had been stopped. Why did you stop the sensor? Shrug. Are you low? No. He pointed to the juice box trash beside the bed. Not sure how many are from last night.

I noticed the sensor sitting there. Why did you pull your sensor? Another shrug.

I waited for my heart to restart then slept a bit more while I had the chance. 

#SingForNicole

Seth was sick last night.  I was up most of the night making sure his blood sugar stayed in a safe range.  My mind automatically went to this story....

It happened again a little over a week ago...a life cut short by type 1 diabetes.  This time, it was close to home.  Nicole's family lives less than an hour from us. I have no details, other than she died in her sleep.  About 5-6% of all children and young adults with type 1 diabetes die in their sleep.  That sounds pretty rare, and it is.  But it is enough to cause many sleepless nights for d-parents.

Nicole was a huge fan of the band One Direction.  She had tickets to attend their concert this summer.  After she passed, her sister began a campaign on Twitter to ask the band to dedicate a song to Nicole at that concert.  I hope they do.  Nothing good can come of a child dying from this terrible disease.  We can only hope that awareness can be raised.  Awareness of how terrible this disease really is.  Awareness that we desperately need a cure.

I don't want to sound all gloom and doom.  We have a good life.  Seth and I were discussing just a few days ago that for the most part diabetes is just an inconvenience in life.  Some days are rough, like last night.  But most days are just regular days, interrupted only by the nuisance of carb counting, blood testing, and insulin injecting. A cure would relieve us of those inconveniences, as well as rid us of the constant fear lurking in the background.  But until that happens, we will continue to KDA every day.

Adventures in Wisdom Teeth, Part Deux

So far, so good!  We made it to the oral surgeon's office on time AND in the blood sugar range he wanted.  What are the chances of that happening??  The procedure went well, and we are back home.  We were gone from home just about 2 hours.   Crazy, right?  Feeling is coming back, blood sugar is coming back down.  Hopefully, recovery will be smooth.  As much as I hate this painful part, the sedation/surgery itself is the most worrisome part for me.

Pre-bolus backfire

Diabetes doesn't like to play by the rules. Even when you do everything right, it doesn't always work the way you think it should.  This weekend was a perfect example of this. 

Friday night, I made a soup that has pasta in it. Typically for my guys,  pasta needs insulin after eating.  This time, however, injecting after he finished eating resulted in double arrows up on Dexcom for Jason. He didn't go super high, just higher than he likes and got there pretty fast. He was back down in range by bedtime, so everything was ok.

Saturday for lunch, we had leftovers of the soup. Since the timing was off Friday night, both guys decided to inject 15-20 minutes before they ate, which they try to do with most meals. We were guessing there wasn't enough fat in the soup to cause a delayed rise in blood sugar like most pasta. So they tested (both around 110), calculated their carbs, injected, and waited about 15 minutes to eat. Halfway through lunch, Jason's Dexcom started buzzing low, and falling. Seth had just pulled his sensor that morning and was waiting until after lunch for a new one, but he said he felt low too. It wasn't long before they were both shaking and sweating.  I sat there not knowing what to do because THEY WERE EATING!!  How the heck do you go low WHILE you're eating?? And since when do both of them have the same reaction to the same meal??

Sorry for the poor quality.  Dexcom receivers are hard to photograph!
This is from a different low...I was way too flustered to take a pic during that fiasco!

As I was contemplating what to do (quick carbs?  Glucagon?), I noticed I was shaking and a little sweaty myself. It only took a few minutes for them to start feeling better as the carbs from their lunch kicked in, but those few minutes seemed like a eternity to me. It may be a while before we have that soup again, but next time we'll try something different. Inject right before eating,  maybe? It's just trial and error, really. But eating shouldn't be that hard, and the error is just unacceptable.  We are learning every day, but there is so much left to learn for us to KDA.

9 minutes of sleep

The best sleep I get is from 6:51 to 7 every morning. Jason kisses me good bye every morning around 6:45, and then Seth's alarm goes off at 6:51, and he hits snooze. At that time I know both are ok and I can sleep peacefully until my alarm goes off at 7. 9 minutes of peaceful, unworried sleep every morning. I never thought I would be  thankful for 9 minutes of sleep. Of course, I get more sleep than that, but none quite like it. So if I look really tired some days, now you know why. 9 minutes is not much, but it's what gets me through some days so I can help my guys KDA.