Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Adele's toe part deux


Happy Canada Day !

We're looking forward to the day off work tomorrow to be able to celebrate living in the best country in the world. There's no vacation from the Type 1 game though. 24/7, 365 days a year. It's a crazy game that we're expected to play with no breaks whatsoever. What other choice do we have?

Adele is still on the Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM). Sensors have been lasting 5 to 6 days lately. Monday nights have been sensor insertion night for the past few weeks. We need a full night in order to freeze the skin, insert the sensor and calibrate. Hopefully it will get better, but right now it's basically a full night.

Last night we inserted a new sensor (and an infusion site insertion and a new insulin reservoir in her pump). The last one had lasted until Sunday afternoon so we had been doing finger pokes since then. The insertion itself was the best so far. Adele was all excited saying that it didn't hurt her at all. I had cut a small dressing to keep things in place while still allowing breathing room for her skin. Adele finds that it itches a whole lot after a few days (not so good when we're trying to keep it on for 6). After that was when the problems started. The pump kept giving us BAD SENSOR errors. After about 2 hours of restarting the sensor and still getting errors, Adele started to cry. She loves the sensor, but was afraid that we had gone through the whole insertion for nothing. I ended up calling the Medtronic helpdesk. The Medtronic support lady stepped me through what I needed to do and we finally got the sensor to start reading glucose levels. Adele went to bed at that point as it was 9 pm. I calibrated around 11 pm and went to bed. The pump alarm woke me up at midnight with a Calibration error alarm. We got up at 2 pm and did a finger poke since the CGM was still not working. This morning I tried again and got it to work. It started reading just before we left the house. I'm glad we didn't remove the sensor and kept trying. Adele was very, very happy when she glanced down at her pump and saw her sugar. I was very happy as well. The pump asked for a calibration in the early afternoon (as expected) and I managed to step Adele's caregiver at daycare through the calibration process.

Now back to Adele's toe (ingrown toenail). It was better following the oral antibiotics, but seemed to have gotten worse a few days after finishing the antibiotics. Adele complains that it hurts and her sugars had crept up as well. Here are the game highlights for the past 2 days...

Monday, June 29th

1:50 am -> 18.4 (way too high, gave 0.6 units insulin)
7:15 am -> 9.8 (a bit too high before breakfast)
8:45 am -> 11.6 (too high before am snack, ate and bolused with 0.8 units insulin)
10:15 am -> 4.2 (dropping very fast, gave 17g carbs to avoid low)
11:15 am -> 4.6 (low avoided before lunch)
2:00 pm -> 7.9
3:10 pm -> 10.0 (a bit high before pm snack)
4:10 pm -> 21.1 (way too high, not sure why it shot up like that, gave 0.9 units insulin)
5:00 pm -> 21.o (still way too high, corrected aggressively before supper, 2.6 units insulin)
7:00 pm -> 7.9 (finally coming down, but will it come down too much?, ate evening snack, bolused with 0.8 units insulin)
8:35 pm -> 18.0 (apparently it won't come down too much, gave 0.7 units insulin)
9:30 pm -> 20.0 (still not coming down, gave another 0.7 units insulin)
11:00 pm -> 9.8 (now it's coming down, but I hope that it won't drop too much, shut off pump for 1 hour)

Tuesday, June 30th

2:00 am -> 8.9 (good for night, didn't do anything. Thanks Type 1 gods, we can sleep!)
7:15 am -> 10.2 (too high before breakfast, ate and bolused with 1.9 units insulin)
8:45 am -> 14.3 (too high before am snack, ate and gave 0.6 units insulin)
10:15 am -> 12.8 (still too high, gave 0.2 units insulin)
11:15 am -> 10.3 (too high before lunch, ate 2.1 units insulin)
1:00 pm -> 10.2
3:15 pm -> 7.4 (very good before pm snack)
5:00 pm -> 9.1 (a bit high before supper, ate and bolused with 2.4 units insulin)

The high sugars on Monday night may have been the cause for the difficulties encountered setting up the CGM sensor. Today's sugars are better than yesterday. Maybe her toe is getting better? We'll see...

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