What happens if you can't fly?

Loving diabetes has been a challenge these past few days. Pretty much overnight Adele has become very resistant to insulin for no apparent reason. After a good week last week, the insulin that used to be mostly "just right" is no longer nearly enough. She doesn't have any cold or flu symptoms, but her blood glucose values have been very difficult to bring down and under control.

Playing the Type 1 game is not an exact science. One of the best Type 1 game quotes that I've read in a while was "doesn't anyone know that my Diabetes management is really just winging it?". This is so true especially for us the past few days. The Type 1 game is played by learning from your mistakes or by what has worked in the past. The last few days, what was working in the past no longer worked whatsoever, so what else could we do but "wing it"? The problem with this is that it's very stressful and there is a pretty big chance that the results obtained are not what we're aiming for. So goes the Type 1 game, always there to remind you that you haven't beaten it and that you should NEVER EVER be caught off guard.

Last night, Adele's sugars started creeping up, 15.0 when she went to bed, we corrected with an insulin bolus, but it still kept climbing. It was up to 17.2 by the time that I went to bed and she had alot of active insulin onboard from all of the corrections that I had been making to try to bring her blood glucose down. So, I "winged it" and gave her another 0.6 units of insulin. This amount was my best guess. I needed to sleep. I set the alarm clock for 2 hours later and crashed as soon as I hit the pillow.

Adele's pump alarm woke me up at 4 am. I had either forgotten to turn the alarm clock on before hitting the sack or Michele turned it off when it went off at 1 am. I have no idea what happened but we slept through the scheduled check? Adele's sugar was 4.3, not low but not high enough to be safe for the rest of the night. I turned off her pump for 1 hour, gave her 7 grams of carbs and tried to go back to sleep. I tossed and turned until the alarm went off at 6:30. Her sugar was 12.5, too high. I had tried to "wing it" and came out short...

A big bolus before breakfast to try and start bringing the sugar down followed by the rest of the insulin to hopefully cover her meal after she finished eating and off to school. Her blood glucose level slowly climbed all morning 16.7, 18.0 and 22.3 before lunch even after being quite aggressive with insulin all morning. Adele felt like crap and we needed to do something, things were quickly getting out of hand. So, I left work and went to pick her up. As soon as we got home, I gave her 2 units of insulin via a syringe and put cream on her skin to freeze it so that we could insert a new infusion set. An infusion set that is blocked means that she's not getting all (or any) of her insulin which could be the cause for the high. We waited for a bit before having lunch (to hopefully bring the sugar down), ate, then inserted a new infusion set and I brought her back to school.

The blood sugar slowly came down but still seemed to be stuck in the 12's (still too high), so I just "winged it" again and upped the basal rate as well as the supper bolus. The result? 3.1 before the evening snack. Hopefully tomorrow I will be better at "winging it"...

The funny thing is that you would never be able to stay employed if you tried to "wing it" like this in most jobs or careers in life. It's a crazy game that we play given the rules and what's at stake, but I guess that there's no time to think about it too much since in the end all you can do is try to "wing it"...