We have been "live" (with insulin... the week with saline & still doing the injections don't count!) on the pump for almost 4 full weeks now! It has been interesting, to say the least! I think we were warned that there would be a lot of testing when you first start on a pump, but I never expected this much testing! We have gone through almost 300 test strips in 5 weeks! I liked a comment another mom posted on a Facebook group... "If I find another test strip on the floor, I'm going to scream!" And that is how I feel some days! We've even been using a different meter for 5 weeks and I'm still finding strips on the floor from the old one!
When Ellee was first diagnosed, we had to keep careful logs of everything and fax them to the doctors office to review to see if any adjustments in her dosage needed made. Once we felt like her numbers were stable and under control, we stopped faxing. When starting on the pump, it is like starting all over with diabetes. We have to log everything and fax it in.
Our first couple of weeks were riddled with extreme highs and extreme lows - both of which are very dangerous. Here is a puzzle that I need to figure out - something needs changed, but what? Every couple of days I would pouring over days of log sheets and numbers, trying to figure out variables, I made changes here and there. Slowly, but surely, her numbers are getting better!
I'm glad they moved up our next Endo appointment by a month! We went on Monday the 31st. I was so glad to see our Nurse Practitioner to go over the latest numbers! Normally our appointments are filled with meeting with 2-3 different people and a lot of waiting in between. As soon as we got in there, the NP was in and out of the room right off the bat! I love this lady! She is so easy to talk to and she is very understanding! With many days worth of log sheets spread out on the exam table, she and I went back and forth with patterns were were seeing along with bouncing ideas of changes to make. Would changing this help this? How would that effect this?
Another thing I love about our NP is that she asked how we felt! I have read about many diabetics and their families complaining about the emotional toll this takes on them, and the doctors only seem concerned with the numbers, not emotions. The social worker who came in and spoke with us first said that they have a councilor who specializes in T1D that we can set up an appointment with if we ever need it. Then the NP asked us how we felt about the pump and care in general... then she asked Ellee how she feels about it!
After we were all done, the NP went to get our new scripts so that we could go and it dawned on me that she never told us what her A1C was! When she came back, I asked. She said she realized that she forgot to tell us that it was 7.6! With in a month, we came down a whole half a point! And for the first time in quite a while, we got below 8! As rough as this past month has been with extreme numbers, we dropped half a point?! I can see that in the long run, being on a pump will be a life saver! I can only image how much better her A1C will get once we get her dosing straightened out!
The last few days I have been seeing another pattern in Ellee's numbers, and that is her going low at night. The past few mornings I have been dropping her dosage quite a bit. Why all of a sudden now? Why go from consistently being high at night to being low? I think it's from the "fear of the unknown" and "fear of something new and different". She no longer panics when it's time to change out her infusion set. She may get apprehensive in the minutes before I insert it, but she is calmer and more willing to work with me on the process of changing it. I think the fears she has of the needle to set the infusion set are subsiding. She definitely sees that the pump is much more convenient than the injections with the pen. And if you ask her the best thing about the pump, she'll tell you "no more night-night shot!" They say that emotions play havoc on blood sugars, and I think this is one of the first times that I am seeing that it's true. I think that her fear of starting something new made her go high at night, and as she is seeing that this is so much better, there is less emotional stress.
Things keep getting better as time goes on!
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