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Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Insulin Roulette

Well, I thought I was going to start getting more sleep.  And I did, for one night.  After calling in our son's blood sugar numbers yesterday for the previous day, we discovered that we will be playing a version of Russian Roulette, called instead by myself, insulin roulette.  The exciting news is that our son's blood sugar only went above 400 one time yesterday.  That means the hardened shell that the glucose in his blood had formed around his cells is starting to break down and allow the insulin to actually penetrate and start working more effectively.  On the other hand, they are hesitant to just start dropping the doses of insulin (which even they admit are really high) because they don't want to to deprive his body of the insulin if those doses are what he needs for a few more days.  With that said, they also cautioned us that his blood sugar could drop too quickly and he could experience a low.  So what to do?  Test his blood sugar extra times over night as we have been just to make sure he isn't going below a certain threshold, in our son's case, 100.  So we play this game of how much insulin our son actually needs during our process of returning his body back to a more normal state.  Nerve racking?  Umm, yes.  If our son does experience a low, which we were advised will probably happen within a few months, we need to be on top of it.  Side effects of a low are a possible seizure and unconsciousness.  In either case, we have the equivalent of an epi-pen, just super loaded with glucose instead to jump start his body.  I hope we never have to use it, but there is a distinct possibility we might.  We were told even last night to have supplies on hand should our son's blood sugar dip too low.  The emergency supplies we have consists not only of the epi-pen like device called glucagon, but also sugar tablets, juice boxes, and little packs of applesauce, all sources of carbs which can relatively quickly raise his blood sugar to a safe level if need be.  But, with all that said, his blood sugar stayed in the 200 range all last night and early this morning so for now, no lows for us.  And this afternoon's call with our son's blood sugar numbers will determine the amount of sleep I get tonight.  

Funny thing is, after a week of interrupted sleep, my body got used to the schedule rather quickly and I woke up more tired after a full night's sleep Monday night than I did this morning after a night of interrupted sleep.  Go figure.  However, all's well that ends well I suppose, its just a matter of getting through everything in between.  Outside of my lack of sleep and our little game of insulin roulette, I must say that with diabetes now diagnosed in our son and management of it taking effect, it is like we have a whole new child on our hands, which makes me wonder exactly how long he had been dealing with a lack of insulin in his body.  I wonder if it was a slow onset where the insulin slowly got shut down or it just took a while for his body to react to a lack of insulin.  The reason I say this is because our son now is much more cooperative around the house.  While he doens't listen all the time as no child does, he helps out more, is more cognizant of what he is doing in general, and can focus a little better than previously.  I don't know how this is all happening, but I will take a slightly more cooperative child and one that will actually talk to you when things happen between him and his sister and discuss the incident and the remedy that needs to take place.  Which brings me to his sister.  

She being two years younger has suffered no ill effects of our son being the complete center of attention for a week.  She did yearn to have her whole family home with her by the end of it all, but by now, that is all in the past and she is fully on board with diabetes and everything it entails.  The two of them run around the house with Rufus the diabetic teddy bear (he even has spots felt spots for injections and a fake needle for them to play with) testing his blood sugar and giving him doses of insulin.  She is luckily a resilient, head strong, stubborn, beautiful, and independent little girl who adapts quickly and gets along really well with her brother.  Watching the two of the play makes it seem as if last week never happened.  The routine we are slipping into with blood sugar testing and insulin injections is accepted by all the in the house and has proved to not be a deterrent for anything right now.  I think the biggest reason things returned so quickly to normal is that our son, once home, did not get extra special treatment.  He returned to being one of two children in the house with rules that needed following.  With his sister seeing this, I think it helped to ensure that neither felt slighted and that both felt like they were loved just as before.  To be honest, our son does receive slightly more attention only because we need to test his blood sugar and give him injections, but outside of that, the house rules remain as they were.  Well, I guess today will be another caffeine fueled day, the best discovery known to man in my mind, and I will play my own little game of sleep roulette; will my sleep be consistent or interrupted? 

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