Monday, December 13, 2010

Brave Boy Brag

Last night at bedtime check and Lantus time, Bryson decides he wants to give him own shot. He has drew up the insulin before and wanted to, and tried but hasnt quite made it there. I understand completely.It has to be hard to try to give yourself a shot. His endo also said until age 10, they arent developmentally there to do it.

Well last night he proved us all. He gave himself his Lantus in his leg. And was thrilled to death with himself. As were we. He conquered something he wanted to do so badly.

At breakfast this morning, he did it again.


He is so proud of himself, and that makes me so happy for him. I dont expect him to do it, but I'm proud he pushed himself past his fear! Good Job Bryson!

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Doctor's Appt.

We went back to the endo today. We just love Dr.Artz! She thought everything looked really good, and that we are still in the honeymoon phase probably. She also told us that come March, when we go back, to be ready to discuss PUMPS!

Yay! We told her we had it narrowed down pretty much. Unless insurance costs change it majorly, we will be picking the Medtronic!

We also had blood drawn and now have new A1C results. Of course, the honeymoon phase could have something to do with this...but I'll take it...we had 11.3 when they admitted Bryson in the hospital in September, but today....


7.2!!!!!  Yes, a 7.2!! That's really good! I wish I was naive enough to think it would stay there, but I'm just glad we were able to get it that good on the first try!

We also added another nighttime check, at midnight and 3 am. Just till we get a better idea of what his numbers are through the night. He is still having frequent bathroom trips during the night and we are pondering what it may be. So, I get another alarm to set for a while.  As much as I love my sleep, I really dont mind the checks. It makes me sleep a little better.

Monday, November 29, 2010

JDRF walks

So I'm looking into getting our walking team ready, and well...I have no clue where to start! I'm trying to come up with a cute team name and all that fun stuff. How do you decide on how much money to raise?

I just have no clue where to start, so if you have any advice please help!!!

Friday, November 26, 2010

Well...

Another Angel got her wings. I posted the other day that I was thankful that Josh's grandmother was able to be here for another Thanksgiving. Well, she passed away Thanksgiving morning. She went peacefully in her sleep and its a blessing to know that she has no more pain and suffering. We will miss her so very much but have comfort knowing she is in a much better place.

We love you and miss you Mamaw!

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving All!

I'm working on trying to figure out a few carb counts on some of Brysons favorite things and then I'm headed down to help my grandma cook the big dinner!

I'm so thankful for all our readers :)

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

So much to be Thankful for.

As rough and crazy as this past year has been, our family has so much to be thankful for.
 I'm so thankful for the fulltime position I was able to take at school, an amazingly awesome teacher I work with, wonderful group of kids that make me excited to go to work each day.  We are thankful that our family has been remotely healthy. That Josh's grandmother is able to be here for another Thanksgiving (as of this summer, we werent sure this was possible).For new friends and rekindled friendships. For good jobs. That Bryson was baptized this summer :) For all the support from friends and family and coworkers through the past few months. Our little house which makes such a cozy home for us 4.

I'm also thankful for this blog, which has allowed me to reach out to others and to find other D-Moms.

We are truly so blessed!

We hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

WootWoot It's Party Time!!



Guess who is having a birthday today??

BRYSON!!!

Happy 8th birthday to one very awesome little boy. I'm so excited to be his mom and love him to the moon and back!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Self Portrait

Bryson wrote me a little and added this little self portrait at the end. I thought it was too cute not to share!

Thursday, November 11, 2010

All the cool kids are doing it...

Listing 6 things they want everyone to know about Type1 Diabetes. So I'm jumping on the bandwagon too!

1. There is nothing Bryson, Josh, Me or anyone else could have done to cause Bryson to have Diabetes.He didn't eat too much sugar, not take him vitamins, drink baby formula, he doesn't weigh too much or too little. There is nothing we could have done to prevent it.

2. Insulin keeps him alive. If he went without insulin, he would DIE. Point blank. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Insulin was created in 1920something, before that people literally died of starvation. That is just awful.

3.He can eat whatever he wants..We try to not deprive him of anything. Everything is okay in moderation, like it should be for everyone. Can he gorge himself on a dozen doughnuts? NO! But neither should I! We just have to cover whatever he eats with insulin.

4.Insulin helps, but is not a CURE! There is no cure for diabetes right now. Hopefully with more fundraising to benefit research..and more research there will one day be a cure. Finding a cure for cancer is at the top of many many kids (and parents) Christmas lists.

5. People do die from diabetes. It is a very serious invisible illness. A few teens have died already this year from Dead in the Bed syndrome. Basically there blood sugar dropped during the night. This is one reason we do at least one check a night, and where the CGM will be a huge help. Living with diabetes can also cause blindness, chrohns disease, kidney failure, and lots of others.

6.This is forever. Bryson will live with diabetes forever (unless a miracle cure is found). He will prick his finger at least 6 times a day, give himself shots or be dependent on a pump, having major medical costs, count carbs and deal with high/low blood sugars for the rest of his life.  His kids will be at a higher risk to have diabetes as well.

These are just a few things I want people to know. There are thousands of other things, but there is no point overwhelming people like that..we d-parents and grandparents and friends are overwhelmed enough..

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

So much for that..

So much for our posting everyday! I have had writers block or something the past few days. We had a super busy weekend and week too it seems.

We had our school Variety Show and it was a blast, this is my last year serving on the PTO..I've served for 3 years now and its time to let someone else take over the presidental reins. Bryson and Carson both loved seeing their teachers get up on stage and act out skits and songs..we all make a fool out of our selfs and its alot of fun. Absolutely worth the $5.00!  I spent most of the day decorating and popping popcorn before it all started and Bryson ran around with his friends all day. It was so good for him!

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Oh what a day..

What a Friday!

Had lots of stuff going on at school and It had already been a super long day. My phone rings, its Bryson. "Mom, I'm uh out of test strips and our class is getting ready to go to P.E". Crap! I look in my extra supply bag in my purse. Oh no, I had exchanged his strip container for mine while out of town for Halloween (which I still need to post about..doh!). Oh no! What to do?  Hubby is at work over a hour away.  Get hold of a good friend, they have a key and can get in my house to get strips. They bring them to us at school. Hmm...this box looks different though? CVS messed up our test strip order. SO after all that trouble, I still cant check him.  Clock out and check him out of school knowing I had to be back in 15 minutes. Run to the closest store that sale them & paid FULL PRICE! Oh just lovely!

SO today, Saturday, I'm off to argue with CVS about the ole..500...wrong strips I was given. No little butterflies on these :(  Hoping they will easily swap them out for us.

I need to look into a mail order company where I can get 3 months supply..our insurance company doesn't have any preference and will approve anywhere.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Does it ever go away??

Or does your skin just get thicker??


We have a wild busy weekend ahead of us, so we decided to go out to dinner tonight. I had Bryson's dinner all planned out and we were ready to order. He ordered Diet Coke. (We try to limit the caffeine, but out to dinner is a special treat...so hey..whatever he wants :) ) First weird look from the waitress. Yes, he's 8 and ordered Diet coke..whatever! Then he wants a steak and salad. He also wants two rolls. (We went to the home of the yummy poppyseed rolls and honey butter!Good choice, Bry!) She gave us this very strange look when he ordered a salad as his only side dish. His steak came with two, but he declined since they were potatoes, potatoes, potatoes.. Again another weird look.

I'm sure the fact little brother ordered a grilled cheese and fries didn't help either.

Anyways, I guess I will start getting thicker skin soon..Just give it time, right?

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Support

As lucky as I have been to find great online resources such as www.childrenwithdiabetes.com , juvenation, and tons of great blogs..I still have this alone feeling at times. I tell people my struggles, like Monday night and this glazed over look comes over their faces. They just don't get it.  The struggle to be the perfect pancreas. When our numbers take a roller coaster ride it consumes our brain. I constantly think of numbers, insulin, carbs..  sometimes I wish our area had a local support group. I have yet to find one. This is something I've been praying about for us. Just to have people who understand. I really try to not bore my friends and coworkers with all the details of "D"and how it affects us..but I cant help it. It is constantly in my brain.

Thank goodness that as much of a part of Bryson's life it is, it never seems to bother his interaction with other kids. He doesn't mention it and neither do they.  They discuss Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, Fineas and Ferb, SillyBandz, etc..but diabetes rarely creeps in his conversations. Isn't the simplicity of friendships in kids awesome??

2nd day and I've already missed a day..oops

Well yesterday was kind of a wild day. We had a teacher workday and the boys stayed with my Sister in law. This was the first time she had given him a shot. We were both a nervous wreck, but we made it through...and hopefully I made it off the bad list at work, lol. I have missed so many days with doctor appointments and things..so I really needed to work this workday. The teacher I work with and I got alot accomplished so that was nice. Plus mom got to grab lunch out with the girls..woot!!

Monday night when I did our usual 3:00am check...Bryson was low..not terribly but 66. Drank one of those handy little 15 carb liquid sugar boxes..Thanks JuicyJuice! 15 minutes later..74...hmm.. drink another..he's too sleepy to chew starburst or tablets...wait another 15 minutes... 90! Yay! Finally about 80!  I let him go back to sleep, and I lay and toss and turn and worry till the clock goes off at 5:00 for Josh to get up and go to work. I tell him to check Bryson and I nod off for another 45 minutes of sleep.   I cant wait to get a CGM!  I'm so scared he is going to go too low at night and I'm not going to catch it. This is one of my biggest fears. And from reading other blogs, I'm not alone in this fear...which makes me sad too. 

Monday, November 1, 2010

A lil bout us... Day One of November Blogging!

1. What kind on insulin management mode do you use?MDI, for right now.
2. How often do you inject/change pump sites?Bryson gets injections at every meal, and bedtime.
3. What type (s) of insulin do you use?We use Humalog for mealtimes and Lantus for nighttime
4. What are your basal settings ?  7 units at night.5. What are your correction factors ?For every 50 about 300 is .5 except bedtime.
6. What are your meal ratios ?1:25 for all meals but bedtime snack then its 1:50
7. What do you do for activity and/or PE?I monitor like crazy and have been giving him a larger than 15 carb snack beforehand. Not too large..but about 20 carbs..usually peanut butter crackers.
8. How do you manage Pizza, Macaroni and Cheese, or any other "difficult to manage" foods?We find if we limit the amount of "difficult" foods, it doesn't make his BG go crazy.
 9. How do you prefer to manage your logs/data?We write everything in a log that we got from the hospital. It's has a frog on it and fits perfectly in his bag.
10. What's your A1c?Dx (Sept '10) - 11.3

Sunday, October 31, 2010

November!!

November 14th is World Diabetes Day. This month I am participating in the NaBloPoMo...National blog posting month. My goal is to blog everyday in November. Because November is Diabetes month, most everything will deal with D in some way.

The fact many people dont know about National Diabetes month is really sad. We have everything under the sun painted PINK for October, breast cancer month and nothing light blue or grey for Diabetes. I hate that so many people are affected by Breast Cancer, and I'm not making light of the situation at all..it just that so many people are focused on just one cause and the others are forgotten. I found this and wanted to share it:


I know at the end it mentions Type 2. I hate the fact that "Diabetes" is type one and two lumped together. The two can not be compared fairly . I get so tired of hearing why cant Bryson just take a pill (type 2 can), does he have diabetes because he ate too much junk food or overweight?(Not the only cause of Type 2..but more directed at type 2). The two do share some of the same complications.. kidney failure, blindness, stroke, amputation and even death..but they are not always treated the same..


(I dont mean anything negative by comparing this to cancer. I have family members with cancer, have lost family with cancer..I dont mean to take away from the seriousness of it at all.)

Thursday, October 21, 2010

One down...many more to go

After 3 1/2 weeks, we have filled our first Sharps container.
At that rate, I wonder how many we will go through in a lifetime...WOW!

Monday, October 18, 2010

D-101

Here's some important information regarding Bryson and D. These are things you will hear about if you continue reading :) and these are a part of our everyday life.

1st and most important: Bryson's Bag-  right now it is a insulated football bag. This contains very important things:
His FreestyleLite Glucose Meter with testing strips (yes the butterfly ones)
Additional Lancets
Alcohol Pads
Glucagon (More about this in a minute)
Fast Acting Carbs ( JuicyJuice box, Glucose Tabs, Starburst)
His daytime insulin (Humalog)
Syringes
Logbook
Book for Dummies(a little notebook with everything and anything you should know for Bryson)





Glucagon- A bright orange kit that goes everywhere we do. Contains a vial with a powder tablet, and a syringe filled with water. Squirt the water in the vial, shake till dissolved, pull half of the liquid out and inject in stomach area. THIS IS ONLY DONE IF BRYSON CANT SWALLOW LIQUID (he's passed out). Glucagon lets the liver release the stored sugar.


Lows- Anything below 80. This can cause shakiness, confusion, irritability, sleepiness.... We treat these with fast acting carbs( juice box, glucose tabs, 3 starburst) then we check BG 15 minutes later. If Bryson passes out, we check BG, call 911 and administer Glucagon.

Insulin- The hormone that turns food into energy, Bryson doesn't have any..therefore we must inject it. If we don't his body will eat itself..and he will lose weight, produce keytones, etc.

Keytones- This is what happens when the body begins to eat the muscle and fat stored. If Bryson's BG is higher than 300 we must check for keytones by doing a simple urine test. If moderate to high we call his doctor and may be heading to the ER.

StomachVirus- Stomach viruses are very hard on T1 kids. They will make their sugar do crazy things. If Bryson throws up, we are to call the doc and head straight to the ER. You would think we could give him meds to prevent the nausea and vomiting, but they will make him sleepy and he will already be low and this could result in him passing out.

Insulin: We take Humalog during the day and Lantus (Long acting Insulin) at night.

Carbs: Carbohydrates are what our bodies use as sugar. Every carb that goes in his mouth must be counted and given insulin for.

Carb Counting: We must count every carb he eats. This is easier said than done..what happens at that pot luck dinner? We have no clue how many carbs auntie puts in her chicken pies! If we guess the amount of carbs we could send him low! So we are slowly learning how many carbs are in everything and reading every nutritional label in site! He gets one unit of insulin for every 25 carbs.

He gets a couple of snacks a day as well. If these are below 15 carbs he doesn't have to get insulin to cover them! This means no shots for snacks, woohoo!!

Our schedule: Our days begin at 3:00am..with our first finger prick, then at Breakfast we check our BG and give insulin to cover breakfast. Snack about 10:00, then lunchtime check at 11:45 and insulin to cover lunch, check BG before P.E/Recess and afterwards, snack about 1:45, another snack about 3:45, dinner check and insulin to cover dinner, snack about 7:30, bedtime check and LongLasting Insulin. Whew... this doesn't count any checks we may do if he is showing signs of hypo or hyperglycemia...

This is our schedule day in and day out. No days off, no remission, no cure....yet at least.

Honeymoon

Bryson has officially entered the Honeymoon Stage.. yep, you heard it..a 7 year old having a honeymoon. Basically what this means is that his pancreas has been working hard to make insulin for a long time now and then we found out it wasnt...so we start insulin by injection. This gives the pancreas a nice little vacation..and now it has started working again.

This has made Bryson ride the low rollercoaster. We have been hitting 50s, 60s, 70s since about Thursday..going low was becoming more and more frequent as the days have passed.  We spoke with Dr Artz and she decided we needed to up our carb ratio. We went from getting 1 unit of Humalog for every 20 carbs to getting 1 unit for every 25 carbs. Hopefully this will allow us to stay a bit "higher".

Tomorrow, Tuesday is 3 week out from diagnosis.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Brain Overload

Our second day was what I like to call "Brain Overload". We learnt how to draw up insulin, how to give it, what areas to give it, how to check blood sugars, what the numbers meant, how to see the signs of hypo and hyper, how to count carbs, carb ratios, how to give Glucagon if he passes out or if hes not able to eat or drink, it was seriously so much information and all so important. I never thought I could give anyone a shot, especially my own son. But when you realize that small dose of insulin is saving his life..you can do it!!

Thank goodness Josh was able to help me process all this information too. I can remember looking at each other after that day and just thinking that we hoped each other got what the other might not have. Thank goodness for a review the next day and a massive amount of educational materials and books for at home. I have since poured into reading them all and researching things online. But of course, I will never learn it all or feel like I have learned enough.

Our Hospital Stay

I have never went through a hospital so fast, no waiting on them to call our names and bring us back..they heard how high our BG was..and on the way upstairs we went. We met our awesome team of nurses, child life specialists(the fun ones in charge of entertaining the kids, and the holders of the "good game systems"), doctors, student doctors, diabetes educator team, endocrinologists, nutritionists...I think that covers most of them. 

They hooked him up to an IV to start some fluids to help wash the keytones out of his system and to have an IV port in case they needed to administer insulin that way. Luckily our tests came back okay, and we didn't have to go to the ICU section of the Children's Hospital.  We did find out our  a1c was 11.3. This will be changing as we get his numbers under control.

We met Dr.Artz and she explained in better terms how diabetes work for Bryson. She also told us we will start off learning to give insulin shots at least 4 times a day. Luckily they gave us a day to start processing everything before they started our education process.

One thing that kept going through our mind was how EXTREMELY blessed we were. Yes, we had just found out our lives were going to be changing forever, but we had caught this before Bryson had gotten even sicker. As difficult as the thirst and frequent bathroom trips were, it could have made him in terrible pain or even put him in a coma.   GOD is truly GOOD! ALL the TIME!!

A new kind of normal...

On a Monday evening our lives changed forever. Bryson had been complaining of being thirsty all the time and making very frequent trips to the bathroom. On this particular day, after school we ran to the grocery store to pick up a few things. He had went to the restroom before we left school, ten to fifteen minutes later we had an accident in the grocery store. The look of panic and fear that crossed his face let me know something was very very wrong.

Bryson and I dropped Carson off at home with Dad and we ran to our local hospital's walk-in clinic. They did an urinalysis and found sugar in his urine. Pricked his finger, and his BG was 455. I knew very little about diabetes but I did know that was HIGH.  Doctor proceeds to let us leave and tells us to follow up with our pediatrician the next day. Hmm...


I drive home to let Bryson eat dinner and tell Josh what we had found out, all while my mind was going a thousand miles a minute. I got more and more concerned that we shouldn't have left the hospital. We tried to find a glucose meter but pharmacy had already closed. We remembered  a good friend/EMT would have one. Called him, he checked it...544. 

Called the after hours number at our peds. Get him to the ER at the hosp our ped is affiliated with NOW! and pack a bag.  We get to ER and their meter wouldn't even read that high..just said HIGH.

Next day we wound up at Missions Children Hospital for a 3 day stay. Our official diagnosis date was September 27 2010. A day we learned about our "new kind of normal".