I have had a couple of scary days the last couple of days. Dada has been on insulin now in her pump since Thurs. Something they didn't tell me going into this, is that when changing an insulin regimen, your body can have trouble while trying to adjust to the new regimen. And this is what has happened to Dada. Tues. morning she woke up and her blood sugar was 468. Incredibly high. (normal is 70-120.) I didn't really red flag it b/c she had had cake the night before. I gave her a huge amount of insulin and we went to school. 30 min later, she walks into my classroom. She can barely walk, she was trying to lick her lips cuz they were really dry, she couldn't lick her lips. It was like watching someone in slow motion. You could see her concentrating so hard on just licking her lips. So I checked her sugar thinking it would be really low since I had given her so much insulin at breakfast. Nope, she wasn't low, she was even higher. She was 560. So I told my boss I was leaving and we went home to check her ketone level.
Sidebar~ for those of you who don't know................a ketone is something we can all have. When you don't eat for a while, your body starts to burn fat for fuel. The little pieces of broken up fat are called ketones. For diabetics, ketones mixed with high sugar is bad. Ketones with high blood sugar means your body isn't using the insulin you have to burn your food. So it starts to burn your stored fat. Your body literally thinks you are starving and starts burning fat like crazy. You make more ketones which becomes like poison to your body. You monitor your ketone levels by peeing on a ketone strip and it will tell you what level your ketones are.
Dada's ketone level was moderate to high. Which would explain why she was lethargic, she didn't want to drink or eat. She just wanted to lay down and sleep. She was in the beginning stages of d.k.a. (Diabetic ketoacidosis ) Dka is basically when you have no more insulin in your body. I took off her pump, and gave her a shot. Her sugar finally started coming down. So we kept the pump off most of the day and just gave her shots. By the evening her sugar was normal and her ketones were small. So we felt good about putting the pump back on. We did that, and then checked her before she went to bed (she was 265 so I gave her insulin and she went to bed ) Then in the middle of the night, I checked her and she was 155. So I knew that the pump was working. This morning though, she woke up at 348, with moderate to large ketones. I was SO frustrated! So I called the doctor and we were home for another day of constant checking blood sugar and monitoring ketones.
Today, her sugar has been on the higher side. It has ranged from 200-350, with moderate to large ketones. The last time I checked her, she was down to a small amount of ketones though. So I was happy about that. I am wondering if this site is bad. We currently have it in her upper butt. And we are using a different kind of site then what we started with. I am wondering if we should go back to the 1 we started with. It is just that that is a little more traumatic for her and us to put in then this other 1 we tried.
I am amazed at how she handles these things.......site changes, injections, checking her blood sugar. She just does them like it is just part of daily life. She is amazing. The hardest part is just dealing with her incredible mood swings. This is so hard on my patience level.
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