Sometimes he calms the storm, sometimes he calms the child....

That line is from a song I recently heard while surfing the DOC (diabetes online community) I don't think I've ever heard it before, (see my playlist below to listen to the song.) It sure hit home for me this week. It has been a tough week here in the 2 with type 1 house. We placed sensors on the boys due to increased high blood sugars and readings that were all over the place. Let me tell you that I have a love/ hate relationship with sensors. I love the info and trends you can see, thanks to sensors we found that Caden's glucose has been tanking at about 3 am (caught in 60s-70s twice this week) but the flip side is the lack of sleep takes a huge toll, those alarms are sounding about every 1/2hr some nights it seems. The lack of sleep runs me ragged, emotionally, sadness seems wrapped around me when I get this tired. Fighting D is never ending.. the burden of trying to replace a broken body system is immense and our very best is not enough so much of the time. Yet seeing my boys growing, smiling, never complaining, never letting it get to them, keeps me getting up to silence the alarms, jab the fingers, fumble the pump buttons in the dark.. night after night. But I am feeling weary, so I pray.. Jesus calm the child, if your will is not to calm the storm, please calm the child. Amen

I know how to save a life ...

Sure, folks saw me get up and quickly walk out and then return to my seat during our Sunday church service. What most didn't know is that I was in the process of saving my 8 yr old sons life at that very moment. You see, he was having an insulin reaction/ low blood sugar and his blood sugar at the time was in the 40's. Now without glucose the body will lapse into unconsciousness, seizures and possibly death. Most of the time this type response has become so normal for us that we give it little thought, when their blood sugar plummets we quickly give glucose, without a bat of the eye; and every minute of the day we are supplying them with insulin. Even a few hours without insulin and the body begins to slip into a process that can lead to death within days. But once in a while it hits me how this truly is life saving, the day to day actions we do are life support. Up until insulin was discovered in the 1920's, diabetes was a fatal disease. And I am grateful for the insulin, but it is not a cure by any means, Insulin and quick sugars allow my boys to live, and life is good and I thank God for it, but have no doubt, it is a life lived on life support. Insulin dose not fix diabetes, it does not control diabetes, what it does is prevent death and it allows you to have some management over the control of blood sugar, and if you learn all the tricks and play the game well you just might avoid losing your feet, legs, eyes, kidneys and life, at least at an early age. So thinking about these things prompted me to have a tee shirt made at the fair ..

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I want a cure for diabetes, I want it to come in my son’s lifetime. I will educate and advocate, and until a cure is found I will continue to save lives....

Numbers that scare me..

I am not a person that is worried about numbers for the most part, I don't really mind my age number, I don't get to worked up about the number of dollars made/ spent (you can't take it with you ) Even the random high blood sugar of 300 or 400's doesn't shake me much, cause I know we can get it down.. but some numbers do upset me..
Today I was sitting at my computer surfing some cool home school sites when from the living room I hear.... uh! Mom come now! I'm 39!!!

Fear was in that voice, and fear sprang in my heart, because this 39 happened while hanging out on the sofa playing x- box with his brother, it came out of nowhere.. numbers this morning have been good, no extra activity to account for it, no decreased appetite or illness to blame it on.. lunch was pizza which tends to cause highs, not lows... So if for no reason at all we plummet to 39, my brain begins to wander... what ifs.... what if he had been at the lake, swimming in the deep... what if he were driving, ( it won't be long) what if it was 3:00 in the morning and I hadn't bothered to get up and check his sugar ( some nights I sleep through nighttime checks) .... was he close to having a seizure? or losing consciousness or worse?
Lows are scary, they are scary for the person having them and for the people witnessing them. They are also a part of our life, and for the most part we manage them without much fuss. Funny how saving the life of your child becomes so routine, when I heard 39, I jumped up grabbed the dextrose tabs and pixie sticks and within mins his blood sugar was back up to 77, within seconds of hearing, "come now" I had mentally reviewed where the 'BIG RED" (glucagon ) kit was and the cake icing (just in case). Numbers like 39 will continue to haunt me and keep me up at night, because numbers like 39 do scare me.