Halloween

For Type 1 Diabetics, okay, mostly their parents, this is one of the most dreaded holidays.  EVERYONE gives your kids candy and as kids, all they want to do is eat it... ALL!

Let's start with the reason we parents hate it:
-The kids want the good chocolate, and the older they get, the harder it is for Mom to sneak it away from them! (okay, that has nothing to do with diabetes, but it's true!)
-The boat load of candy they get trick-or-treating.  Even though it seems like fewer and fewer houses pass out candy, the kids still seem to make a huge hull!
-Individually wrapped candy.  The reason this is bad is because very few of them have the nutritional info on it. (more of this below)
-Kids are kids and they want to eat it all at once, and at times when it's not appropriate!  Using candy as a bribe to eat all of their dinner does not always work!

I remember buying Halloween candy, "Pre-T1D", and while reading "call 1-800... for nutritional information" on a box of candy I thought to myself "If you need to know the nutritional information, then do you really need to be eating it?"  Now  I can't believe I use to think that way.  I *hate* reading that on packaging, those words are like my kryptonite!  Now, with the number of people are have T1D, it should be a requirement to print carb counts on EVERYTHING.  From cough drops, to medicine, to individually wrapped candy, how hard would it be to print "xx grams of carbs per serving (or unit)" on everything?

The girls wanted to count their candy when we got home last night.  Dani lined up her mini candy bars and counted, while Ellee counted everything in her bag!  They kept asking to have a piece, and despite protest, I limited them to just two pieces.  I asked Ellee what her second piece was, and she had to dig the wrapper out of the trash to show me because she didn't know.  It was just a chocolate coin... but how do you figure the carbs on that?! This is where I think a small line printed on the plain foil would be a life saver.  "7g of carbs per piece".  See?!  That wouldn't take up too many lines!

This is one of those times I'm loving the pump!  After I figure how much she eats, I can dose her, without interrupting her, without having her hold still, and without dealing with the supplies to give her 1 unit!  Also, the Halloween party at school is another reason I'm loving it!

After the kids got back from their parade in the gym, we played a few games, then passed out cupcakes, popcorn, and juice.  "Pre-Pump", after I saw what all she was eating and figured up the carbs, I'd have to pull her aside (most likely into the hall or bathroom) to give her a shot.  Yesterday, I gave her the meter and had her check her sugar in the one corner of the room, then after I figured her carbs, I programmed the meter and dosed her!  None of the other parents knew what I was doing and I didn't have to pull her out of the room for a few minutes.  It was very discreet and I'm sure it made her feel more like a normal kid! Again, I love this pump!!!

Both of the girls wanted to be Belle for Halloween this year.  And since costumes are tissue thing, I tried my hand at making cloaks for them.  They didn't turn out too terribly bad!

Two Weeks In...

...And this is one tired Momma!  Getting up twice a night to check Ellee's blood sugar is taking a toll on me!

I never would have guessed that it would be this frustrating to pin down patterns to get her dosing rate set!  Her numbers have very few patterns and it seems like they are one extreme or the other.  It's making it hard to say that this rate needs to go up or that one needs to come down.  One positive, is that the lady from the doctors office who has been calling me to go over her logs has been great to work with!  She calls with certain changes in mind, but she is great about talking out my concerns with her and we usually come up with an altered plan of attack together!

I am starting to see a pattern in the night numbers, so I have a few more adjustments to make and try this weekend.  I'm hoping that we can gain a little more insight when we meet with the Nurse Practioner on Monday!

While I am not a fan of the night checks, I am still not regretting this decision to start on the pump!  It is more convenient and in the long run the control over her blood sugar will be better!  When Josh and I talked about a Continuous Blood Glucose Monitor a few months ago, we shot down the idea.  I'm really starting to rethink that idea and will discuss it with the NP on Monday!  I don't like the idea of sticking her with a second thing, but on the other hand, her little fingers need a break from the constant testing.

First Weekend

It has been one long weekend, to say the least!  We have to check sugar levels more often to determine if adjustments to her rates need to be made, and that includes a midnight and a 3 am check!

I will say that right off the bat, the few key features that I am LOVING are:

1.  Correction dose without having to wait till she eats something!  There have been a few times she's been high but not eaten anything, so it's easy to give her a little extra bump of insulin to help bring her down!  This includes while she is sleeping.  In this case, it's hard enough to check her sugar in the dark, not having to try to pin down a limb and literally give her a shot in the dark is awesome!

2.  Insulin on Board calculation.  This is a nice little feature that gives me an idea if she still has insulin in her blood stream that is working.  If she is high, but still has 2 units "on board" then I know that her sugar is on the way down.  If she doesn't have any and she's high, then I know to give her a correction to help bring her down.

3.  Dosing with out making her stand still!  Ellee has developed this little quirk when we give her a dose by using the remote meter.  When we do this, the pump vibrates, I'm not sure why, but I'm guessing it's more to let me know that the pump is receiving the signal and is in fact delivering it.  During a meal as soon as I know how much she is going to eat, I will plug all the info into the meter and have it dose her.  She will inevitably give me this cute, quirky "I caught you trying to be sneaky" look!  Or she'll say "Mom... your giving me my insulin!" The remote meter has got to be my favorite feature, and the main reason we went with this meter over the Medtronic!  During the night I've had to give her a correction dose, and I can do this from the living room or even my room (with a light on) without having to fish for her pump under the sea of blankets and jammies!

4. More precise dose.  With the NovoJr pen we were using, and even syringes, you can only dose in half units.  So, instead of having to decide to round up or round down, we can give a dose in .05 measurements!

5.  It figures the dose for you!  Okay, this is a lazy feature but very handy!  I got in the habit of rounding, and this makes me stop and think about her carbs more accurately, instead of rounding up a few to the nearest 15.  This is also very handy for when Grandma and Grandpa are with her.

Things I am not so in love with:

1.  Meter needs a glowing screen or more contrast.  It's impossible to read at night with out having to rig my cell phone to illuminate.  In certain light and with certain people's eyesight, it's just flat out hard to read.  

2.  Making sure that Ellee wears pants strong enough to hold the weight of the pump!  This may sound like a no brainer, but she wore a pair of knit yoga pants under a dress the other day and she had to keep pulling them up!

3.  Did I mention the two nightly sugar checks?!  Yes, I can tell already that by the end of this week I *will* be a zombie!  This will hopefully just be temporary, but I will be thrilled when we can go down to one check a night or do away with them!  If she doesn't jerk or pull her hand back, then I struggle to get the strip lined up with the blood to get it to read.  I had some how turned the beep off so as I'm struggling to get the blood on the strip, I flipped my phone on so that I could see and noticed that I already had it and it was getting ready to show the result.  There has got to be an easier way to check sugars at night!

Pump Therapy definitely has it's ups and downs, but for the most part, this was by far the best move for Ellee!  She still panics when it's time to put a new infusion set on.  She likes to be able to take the old one off in the shower, herself.  It's still a fight and a little bit of coaxing to insert the new one, but I'm able to get her to hold still so that I can do it myself at home.  Before at the doctors office, it's taken either Josh or I to hold her while the other inserted it.  Last night I tried putting a Popsicle on to numb her up some before wiping it with the alcohol.  I may be on to something with that because eating the Popsicle afterwards was a treat!

Last Shots

Last night was our last night of Lantus!  We didn't celebrate, but should have!  Instead, we will celebrate tomorrow morning after our last shot from our NovoJr pen for breakfast in the morning!  I've said many times before that after dealing with this for 2 1/2 years, as I look back at different things, I can't imagine how we "use to do things".  How we use to sit down for a meal without having to check sugar, figure food portions, count carbs, and everything else involved in treating T1D.

I wasn't sure I would like the pen, but after getting one, it was SOOO much better than a syringe!  And I'm sure the same will be true with the pump.  After we are on this for a while, I'll look back and wonder why I was so scared of it and we didn't switch to this sooner!

We still have to keep the pen and supplies on hand as an emergency back up in case of issues with the pump.  But hopefully we won't have to resort back to it any more than we have to!

So Far, So Good

The training session went okay.  Both girls were there and it seemed like once we got into the important stuff on the pump, I had to leave the room with one of the girls.  The pump rep was so good about all of it!  It was a one on one session with her, so we could go at our own pace and we didn't have a set time limit of how long we had to get through all of this.  First it was Dani having to go potty 15 minutes into the session even though I tried to get her to go before we went in!  The second time it was with Ellee and I was NOT a happy camper.  She got our attention to show that she had "accidently" gotten her gum all over her hands.  And when I say all over, I mean all over!  It was like a witch's web between the two hands that you would do with a long string of yarn!

I don't know what I was more upset about, the fact that she was playing with her gum when she knew better and has gotten in trouble for it before... or that the rep was getting into the important details of how to use the pump and I needed to leave the room to take care of this!  Not knowing the best way to deal with this, I take her to the bathroom and hope the cold water makes it less tacky so that we can pick it off.   A few minutes later, the rep comes in with a bottle of hand sanitizer and said she wondered if that would help take it off.  After a few more minutes of picking to get the bulk of it off, we go back to the room with a handful of paper towels.

We tried the hand sanitizer and while Ellee picked, she went back over everything I missed.  Soon we got to the point of the routine of hooking up the pump.  Now we need to insert the infusion set on Ellee so that we can finish the set up.  I had hoped that we were over the freak-out-and-panic stage when it came time to insert a set, but I was wrong.  She flipped out and Josh had to hold her in a bear hug so that I could insert the set.  She showed us little tricks to getting a good insertion and adhesion of the tape.  

Once Ellee sat down and started picking at the gum again, she settled down.  The rep finished showing us how to hook everything up and showed us other neat features of both the pump and remote. And that was it.  She gave us instructions for when we come back the following week and made sure we had the few new scripts for supplies that we needed and we were headed out!

The immediate benefits that I see is that of the meter remote!  That and it's funny to see Ellee's face when her pump buzzes from a remote delivery of insulin!  She knows what it's for, but she still gives me this goofy face that I can't help but laugh at!  This morning it was in the middle of her drinking her milk out of the cereal bowl!  Being able to dose her while she's eating is a big advantage, that way I don't have to interrupt her to find a suitable patch of skin for her shot.

Just like anything, there are a few drawbacks, but the pro's out weigh the con's so in the long run, this is definitely a great choice for us!

Butterflies

2 1/2 years ago while we were in the hospital learning how to deal with this newly diagnosed disease, I knew that eventually she'd be on a pump.  To be honest, the idea scared me and even made me sick to my stomach because I couldn't even begin to image how it would feel to have a tube inserted into you and left on for 3 days.    6 months ago I wanted to learn more.  I wanted to see how it went in and I wanted to see how it felt.  To my surprise, I couldn't feel it at all!  Pleasantly surprised to say the least!

Ever since then, I've done so much research.  I've watched YouTube videos to get an idea of how to insert it.  I've read blogs, discussion boards, and manufacturer websites.  I spoke with pump reps to have the ins and outs demonstrated to me and even wore two different infusion sets!

I was not only ready, I was excited!  Getting Ellee excited wasn't as easy, but to a 6 year old, why would this be?  With the help of Grandma & Grandpa talking it up and helping explain to her why this is better, she is finally ready!  Well, as ready as a 6 year old can be!

Today is our big day!  Grandma came over to get Ellee on the school bus so I could go into work early and get a few things wrapped up.  When Grandma woke her up this morning to get her ready for school, she excitedly told Ellee that today was the big day that we get to put the pump on, and in a week, we will no longer have to do shots!  It was a huge sigh of relief to hear El get excited with her!

Keeping my fingers crossed that all goes well this afternoon and for the next week!  As with everything that we've had to deal with since diagnosis, the first month or two are rough.  Then, after a while it becomes second nature I can't imagine it any other way!