What a scary day

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.

Dada's pump

This is what is called her "site". This we have to change every 3 days. It is fairly painless to insert. It's more uncomfortable then pain. If you look at the picture good, you can see a red tiny dot below the site. This is from her last site. When we took the old 1 out, there was this scar there. I am afraid that when she gets older, her stomach will be full of these.


This is her pump. She wanted a pink 1 and that is what she got. The pink part is actually called a skin. You can change these when you want.

We went yesterday to Madison and got her started on her insulin. It went really smoothly except for the fact that about an hour into our trip to Madison, Dada started vomiting!! We had no idea that she didn't feel well before we left. She had eaten a good breakfast and was fighting with her brother as usual!! :) She puked twice in the car before we got to the doc and then once while we were in the office! I felt horrible for even being there, but we needed to switch her over to insulin! She slept the whole way home, and then when we got home, she wanted some soup. So I made tomato soup and grilled cheese for supper. She ate some of that. I thought she was going to keep it down, but 2 hours later, she drank some water and then threw up. Thankfully that was the last time.

I set the alarm to check her sugar about 3 last night. I never do this, but I thought with just switching her to insulin, and her being sick, I thought it would be a good idea. I'm glad I did, because she was 46!!( I took her pump off b/c I didn't want her getting more insulin being so low!!) I gave her some juice(after she chugged her juice, she immediately asked where her bucket was. I didn't think that was a good sign. :) ) I then checked her again 15 min later, and she was only 50. So I then resorted to Mountain Dew. That brought her sugar up! I checked her sugar 15 min later and it was 66. So I gave her a little but more pop, and then went to bed. Jeremy checked her at 6:30 when he woke up and she was 270. We then put her pump back on.

more pictures

Here are the kids school pictures..............

Dada~1st grade

Brother~k-4

As promised

You really have no idea how hard it is for me to post these pictures of me on here. I have an idea of what I look like in my head, but what I see in a picture is totally not what I think in my head. So it really depresses me to see pictures of myself. I avoid getting pictures taken of me at all cost. I am going to be brave and face my fear.

Me as a blond- my school picture......yuck!!

My new hairstyle. BTW, I told you it isn't a great picture!!

Hair

I cannot believe my kids. Everyday I have to fight with them to get up, Maddie always tells me she doesn't feel well, and she is just so tired, and finally after fighting with her for about 10 min, she gets up. So of course on the day that they can sleep in, they are both up running around and blaring music at 6 o'clock in the morning. Yes, I said 6. I couldn't believe it, when they woke up this morning. And while I was laying in bed, praying that by some miracle they actually would fall back to sleep, my mind started racing with all these thoughts about what I could actually blog about. So here I am. Praying that my thoughts won't slip away, b/c it is hard for me to think of something to blog about.

Well, as some of you know, I have been growing my hair out. It has been about 18 months since I have made this decision and my hair is not even shoulder length. I have been so sick of this growing out phase. I thought maybe if I were a different color that would help, so I "highlighted" it blond. Nope, that most definitely didn't help. So then I had it colored. I LOVE my new color. It is a reddish brown on the bottom and strips of gold with the reddish brown. It really does look very nice. I also had it trimmed up just a little. I say all that to say that people have been commenting quite frequently about my hair. The comments range from oh, your hair looks so nice, to have you been doing something different to your hair. I have also gotten the rare, Julie, your hair is actually starting to look nice. But my favorite 1 of all time happened this Sunday by a little old lady in my church. She was staring at me when she was walking past me and she said.........oh you look so pretty, I almost didn't recognize you. Hunny and I just stared at each other in disbelief, and then I said thank you. I sort of took it with a grain of salt. If you knew this lady you would know that she didn't say it to be mean. But I still had to laugh. ( I will post pictures later of my hair )

Well, now the rest of my thoughts are gone, so you will have to wait in anticipation for another day when my kids wake me at the butt crack of dawn. Hopefully that will be a while.

again no title.

Well it sure has been a while since I have posted. I am sorry. Things are going well. Crazy, but good. Maddie got her pump. We went to Madison on Friday, and got trained on how to use it. We are doing a trial run with it this week. We are just pumping saline this week, and then on Thurs. we will go back to the doc, and we will switch her over to insulin. I am so excited about this whole pump thing. It is an amazing little contraption. I am so thankful that we did this.

Jeremy is finally working 40 hours. I am very thankful for that. But God has been so good in meeting our needs. I am amazed at how he has worked things out!!

I promise to write more later!!

If I had a title it would go here

Wow! It has been a while since I have updated! We have been having problems with our internet. I guess we had a virus that attacked our internet. Fun times. We are thankful to our good friend JP who has been such a help in getting us back up and running. I am lost without my blogworld!

Volleyball season is now over. Our record was 2 and 6. Not to hot, but they were successful in playing together as a team and having fun. So I was happy with them. I really did enjoy coaching and I was thankful for the opportunity. The hardest part was having to deal with the parents. You would be surprised how parents make things so difficult. They are constantly complaining about something. We did have an end of the season slumber party last Friday night! Yes, I am crazy. We had 16 jh girls. It was crazy. They didn't go to sleep until 3!!!!! Needless to say I was exhausted, but they had a great time, so I guess it was worth it. I can't get over how jh girls like to hug! I came home and I wanted to scream please don't touch me!! But I of course couldn't do that. But I did take a 2 and 1/2 hour nap which was amazing!

Cheer leading starts now. Our 1st practice was yesterday. I don't know much about cheer leading as I was never a cheerleader, but I told my friend I would help her. I am looking forward to hopefully building up some school spirit. I feel our school is lacking in that department. Cheer leading season is a longer season, but I won't be needed as much and I am thankful for that.

I had to go to the dentist yesterday. It was not fun at all. I needed to have a root canal done. I am still in pain today. I pray that we now get the money to pay for the bill.

We have decided to put Dada on the pump. We got it in the mail on Friday and we are now waiting to go to the doc and have them train us on how to use it. It is a 2 day process so we are hoping to go when hubby is off of work. He has been working on and off lately. Hopefully the plumbing business will pick up soon. Anyway, the pump, Dada is very excited about this. We ordered her a pink 1 like she requested. I hope that she doesn't get scared off when she sees what will actually happen. I have tried to prepare her for what will happen, but knowing that she will have a needle in her stomach and seeing a needle go into her stomach are 2 different things. I did bribe her and tell her that if she got the pump then I would let her get her ears pierced. She is very excited about that.

I am going on a girls weekend this weekend and I am sooo excited!!!! My friend Tancy is running in a 5k and my other friend Beth and I are going for "moral support" during her race. We are then going shopping. Actually I am going looking since I have no money. But needless to say, I am going to have fun and relax with my friends.