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".