The Ugly Face of Diabetes

Boy oh boy did we have a long night and when I say "we" I mean "I" because Loren is out of town on business so I was flying solo. Yesterday evening Syd dropped low, which isn't uncommon for her at the end of the day. I usually give her a juice box or some yogurt and she is good; however, there have been a few occasions where this does not work. Last night happened to be one of those. It evoked feelings in Shamae that are rarely exposed. Let's just say if diabetes were a tangible thing, I would have put it over my knee and spanked the diabetes right out of Syd's pancreas!

Ok back to my story...We enjoyed a lovely dinner of bean burritos, to celebrate Cinco De Mayo of course. Like I need a reason to eat Mexican food! It is a family fav! We got home and it was bath time. Half way through Syd's bath, while she was playing, she suddenly looked at me with big, wandering eyes, pale skin and lips and said, "Mom I feel really low." I didn't want to leave her alone to grab the glucometer, for obvious reasons, so Morgan got it for me. I got Sydney out of the tub, wrapped a towel around her, and checked her sugar. 44. Yowsa. So I gave her a juice box and got her jammies on. Brushed her teeth. Checked her again. 65. Still low but she was coming up so I figured all was well.

I put the girls to bed and jumped on facebook for a while. About 20 minutes later I checked Syd again to make sure she was still coming up. 64. Ok, strange. She should be higher than that but maybe it just needs some more time to kick in. I wait 10 minutes, test again. 58. She is dropping again? I give her more juice and wait. Test...still low. More juice, wait. Test....still low. I tried to wake her up to have her eat some cheerios but she wanted nothing to do with food. She was bouncing between 40s-60s. She was so grumpy and finally started crying and said, "mom I'm tired. Stop waking me up." At 3 in the morning...yes that is right, 3 a.m., I was exhausted. Grumpy. Missing my better half, who was sleeping soundly in Seattle--clearly not the Tom Hanks version. :) I wanted to shut Syd's pump off for the night so I could get some sleep but in so doing I know she would be really high in the morning. I don't want her to be high either because long-term damage from highs are just scary-awful. She gets high enough on her own without me purposely causing a high. Plus, they make Sydney feel really yucky and grouchy. She was going to be grouchy enough from me bugging her all night anyway. I didn't want to compound that for obvious reasons--my dwindling sanity being first and foremost! :-) Some of you may remember something very similar happened back in December.

Finally, selfish-sleepy Shamae caved and I turned her pump off so she would be getting no insulin. (Her pump delivers small basal amounts each hour to control sugar levels so they don't sky rocket.) I waited until her sugars finally got up to 120 and I went to bed and crashed. I woke up at 6:30 to Sydney breathing in my face and telling me she had to go potty "So bad mom!" Well you did drink like 5 juice boxes during the night kido! :-) Syd is a trooper though. She doesn't like her diabetes but she deals with it--better than I do most of the time. Sydney is awesome. I don't think anyone who has met her could ever disagree with that statement. She is Super Syd--sent to the earth to fight diabetes.

Her breakfast sugars were high...265. I gotta try not to let these things get me down but every time stuff like this happens, even though it is completely out of my control, I still feel like I fail just a teeny tiny bit. I know much of my emotions today are due to sleep deprivation but sometimes I get a titch angry that Syd has this disease. Of course, this is our lot in life and we will do our best to fight it and continue to help Sydney be an advocate for her disease. It makes me more determined to do our part to find a cure. As for how I'm feeling, well I am tired but you kind of catch that second wind when the sun comes up so it's all good. We will see what today brings. And, for the record, I am *so* excited to have my hunny get home tomorrow because I have one of those super helpful, awesome husbands who will tell me to go to bed and he will handle the night time sugar checks. Awww, the silver lining. :-)

Just a little FYI, if you hadn't noticed, on the upper right side of my page under the Team Sydney 2009 heading, I put a hyperlink to Syd's youtube video that we made. Good stuff. Thanks to those who have promoted her video on your facebook page and/or your blog. You rock!!

~Here is our Super Syd holding baby Ashlyn--her cousin! Syd is my little hero in pigtails!