D'feated

Chris Martin knew what was up..."Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be this hard. Oh, take me back to the start."

Now I know he wasn't talking about diabetes, but he was essentially talking about life.  And diabetes is our life.  Sometimes I wish we could go back to the start...well, before diabetes.

I also think about before the hubs and I got married 6 years ago...the start of that new life.  Never in a million years would I believe in our first 6 years, I would lose a parent, my husband would lose his job, I would lose my job, our first born would get diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, and then to our most current state...I would be here handling my two girls alone (a 3 year old T1D and a 2 month old) while my husband had to take a job out of state. 

But that's why we don't know the future...we wouldn't do anything with our lives...heck, I probably wouldn't leave the house!

Diabetes has really taken us through the ringer these last few weeks.  Now there haven't been any trips to the ER or frantic calls to the emergency pager.  P has just been high.  I keep chasing and chasing the numbers with more and more insulin.  But at the same time, I'm scared to death that she'll get out of this funk and plummet into hypo seizure. 

I've read other blogs and posts from other type 1 parents about how they always check in the middle of the night...sometimes twice!  I never understood it.  I've never been instructed by our endo to do so unless we change her basal rate.  And ever since Dex entered our lives, I have found myself relying on this technology and hitting the snooze button.  Go back to two nights ago and our "Perfect Storm" hit.  P went to bed with a decent number.  I had changed her basal rate to help her overnite highs, so I set my alarm for 3am for a BG check.  I woke up and checked Dex...250ish.  Now this is not a number that I would give a correction for in the middle of the night...I haven't become that confident in my night time dosing.  I was tired and was starting back to work in the morning so I rolled over and went back to sleep.  Fast forward to the morning...P woke up crankier than usual and told me "I'm thirsty". She was really high.  I busted out the blood ketone meter...large ketones...CRAP!  I kept trying to mess with her pump to see what the correction would be so I wouldn't have to figure the math for her injection (yes, the pump has spoiled me).  The black screen of the pump just stared back at me.  It was dead...

At some point in the middle of the night, her pump battery got low and eventually the pump just shut off.  I never heard any alarms because I had turned off the baby monitor to P's room the afternoon before because she was throwing a huge fit during nap time.  My hands were shaking once I figured out what had happened...I immediately started breathing exercises (like labor breathing) so I wouldn't lose it and start crying.  The guilt is immeasurable.  I probably would have caught this at 3am, but I wanted to sleep.  I obviously have moved on and no doubt, learned from this experience.  I'm lucky the numbers came down and ketones went away...all was well.  This could have been so much worse.   

I am definitely ready to get back to whatever kind of "normalcy" one can have in our situation.  I'm ready to start kicking diabetes butt.  I'm ready to stop feeling like I fail my little girl and her body every day her numbers are out of control.  I'm ready...

In the words of my other boy Tom Hanks "...I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring"

Tomorrow the sun WILL rise (Lord willing)...it's a new day...I can start over.  I will learn from the day before.  And one day...that tide will bring us a CURE!!!