Saturday, December 10, 2011

The End of the Vial

HIGH, two arrows straight up.

Never what you want to see on a dexcom receiver, to state the blatantly obvious!  (And I totally should have taken a picture, but I just couldn't...you understand!)

Yesterday, Bean was at 176 for breakfast...leftovers from coming up from a 69 at 2:48am.  She was at 197 before recess...usually a 'respectable' number, but an uncovered cookie sent her up to 224 for lunch.  350 when she checked and corrected at 1:50.  Down to 195 for a late after school snack at 4:19, then 340 for dinner at 5:48, 435 at 7:32 (correction) and 343 for bedtime at 8:43.  I checked her at 10:59 and she was at 282 and I corrected, again.

We stayed up past 1am chatting with the T1 babysitter we had for the first time last night.  (AH-MAZING!  More on her later) so I totally slept through checking her (HATE that!).  At 6:17, she was at 250 and I corrected her because I knew she'd be sleeping for another two hours and I really wanted her at a nice place for breakfast.

No such luck.

This morning she begged for something other than yogurt for breakfast.  I've been making her have the same thing all this week as I've been testing out a 15-20 minute pre-bolus (thanks to a comment on Wendy's Candy Hearts by Alexis of The Chronicles of D-Boy and Ribbon...love my d-mammas!!) to try to lessen the god awful breakfast BG spike.  Yeah, she was at 229 (hello, how do you only come down 31 points with a correction?!?), but I gave in to her request for Nutella toast and milk.  Now, this breakfast isn't fabulous for her, but it's also not super terrible.  And it was a good test to see how the pre-bolus would work on a bigger, carb-heavier breakfast.

Two hours later, she's at 498.  CRAP on a STICK!  A hefty correction and almost an hour of ice skating brings her down to a pathetic 371.  UGH!

On the way home, Ubergeek and I discuss an early pod change (we generally don't think 'pod issue' when Bean's BG is high like this, but it was obvious something was up and something needed to be done!) and during this discussion I remember that this current pod was filled with the last of the insulin in the vial.  We had this same issue with the last of the last vial, when Bean had ketones for the first time.

So when we get home Bean did a quick ketone check and she's at 1.9.  More crap on a stick!  A pod change using a new vial of insulin is done, as well as a unit given by syringe just for good measure (it was W.E.I.R.D filling a syringe...something I haven't done in over a year ~ the ones to fill the pod don't count!)  She starts lunch at 333.

Three hours later the ketones are down to 0.1 (yeah!) and the BG is down to 323 (crapidty, crap, crap!).

I decide it's time to pull out the big guns.  She's hungry (duh, that lunch hasn't been effectively processed) and is begging for a snack.  I let her have carrots...pretty big bang for your carb buck when you can have a hefty 85g by weight for 8g carbs.  Guns blazing, I double her correction.

Yep, you read that right, double!  No more fiddily farting around with this stupid high BG.  Aim and SHOOT!

So, we'll see what happens in a couple of hours...hoping the bullet doesn't bite me in the butt, but honestly I'd rather have her sucking down a juice to bring her back up from a low than deal with this stupid, stubborn high any longer!!!

And what's crazier is that I was going to be doing some basal changes this weekend because she's been dipping low more often than she 'should.'  So much for that!!

8 comments:

  1. TOTAL UGH on this!! I was dealing with a similar issue this week and it lead to my meltdown on Friday...big HUGS to you my friend and I hope things look better soon!

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  2. I hope you see better numbers soon. We have been dealing with something similar over here but it's not the end of the vial, I think Bekah's legs are getting "full" as that is the only place she will put her sites and I think they are going bad after about 48 hours. ((hugs))

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  3. It's amazing how much troubleshooting we do...all these guesses and ratios and formulas...always testing our brains.

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  4. Sometimes Mary Claire just goes high when she's getting ready to come down with a virus. We see crazy highs, change a site, double the basal, and wait. When it finally comes (sneezing, coughing, or throwing up!), she drops back to a manageable range. Maybe? Or maybe her body loved the Nutella, and her bs did not? heehee
    Hope she doesn't crash, thinking about you guys!

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  5. Ugh - hope all turned out well! That's really frustrating. Hope the fresh insulin and double correction did the trick!

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  6. Ugh! Suckage!! I've been so outta the loop, hope things got better fast!

    Normally the pre bolus works, that high its a crapshoot ;)

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  7. Hope the new insulin/correction worked great..We had our first expierence with "insulin gone bad" last week-Isaac had to have his first shot since starting the pod that day also..

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  8. Rage bolusing... can't blame you. We do rage temp basals, just double her basal as we seem to see the effects sooner than with a straight bolus. It's also smoother in its effect. You still may have to give carbs but seems not to be such a quick drop. Also we often just give an extra unit when high, so, guilty of that as well. As long as you keep an eye on the clock, it usually works.

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