The Girl

The Girl

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Forty Days of Diabetes - Day 31

5:15am and diabetes has already reared its ugly head, interrupted her sleep. I check her every morning when I wake up. She sleeps through it and I get to poke the fingers she avoids so it's a win-win. If she's high it's an easy fix. Her pump does the math and delivers her correction dose at my prompting. If she's low she has to eat. As delicious as candy and cookies are it's a rude awakening when it's being coaxed into your mouth at the crack of dawn. She's mastered the art of "sleep eating" so it's usually uneventful. I feed her 15g of carbs, she goes back to sleep, I recheck in 15 minutes and treat again if necessary.

If she's very high it sets off a series of unfortunate events. Troubleshooting begins; did her site fail, dose she have ketones, is she getting sick, did we forget to bolus for something last night? Check her blood sugar again, check for ketones, do the math and give a subq injection of insulin, prepare new pump site, pull off old pump site, apply new pump site and auto insert it. That's 5 needle sticks before her feet hit the floor. And if we're very lucky she sleeps through the whole thing. But more often than not she's awake by poke number 3 and very unhappy. 

So imagine for a moment being snuggled up in your nice warm bed when someone sneaks in and starts poking and squeezing your fingers and sticking your abdomen or the backs of your arms with needles. And imagine having to live with this for the rest of your life.

We need a cure.


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