A long night
Last night was a rough one. Both kids had great blood sugars at dinner, so we decided to indulge Ollie’s request for spaghetti and meatballs. “But mom, can we do REAL pasta this time, and not spaghetti squash?!” I thought, given the in-target glucose levels at dinner, we’d be ok with a carbtastic dinner. I guess not.
7pm: An hour after dinner blood sugars for both kids started to dip, so we corrected with juice.
8pm: Bedtime came and went. Glucose levels looked great
10pm: Another check before Marshall and I went to bed, and things still looked good.
1am: I got up for my normal 1am check to a whole new world. Walker’s CGM had stopped reading somewhere around 11pm or so, and when I checked her with blood it read 559! After a visit to the bathroom (and bedding change because of an accident), she had a hefty correction bolus of 4.9 units. I checked Ollie and he was also high, reading 379, and likewise had a big correction bolus.
2:30am: Considering their numbers were so ridiculous I decided to check an hour and a half after blousing to ensure we were heading in the right direction. Insulin takes 3 hours to be fully utilized, so at 1.5 hours we are about half way through its potency. It also concerned me that I couldn’t get a CGM read on Walker, so if she continued to climb and likely develop ketones I wouldn’t be alerted. At 2:30am Walker was down to 407; still not where I wanted her, but at least coming down. Ollie was 296, and also headed in the right direction but still quite high. I gave another conservative correction (.5 units) for both kids. I didn’t want to overload their system with insulin, because at 1.5 hours they still had “insulin on board” meaning there was still insulin available in their system that had not yet been used. If I dosed too much at this point it could potentially send them crashing into a low.
4am: At this check I could be sure all the insulin from the hefty 1am dose had been used up, and I should see them start to come more into range. If not, I would likely need to correct with a shot and do a site change. Both kids were still high. Walker was 372 and Ollie was 239. I didn’t feel it worthy of a shot, because given their 1am glucose levels, both kids had dropped by nearly 200 mg/dL. I dosed another correction through their pumps, and checked Walker for ketones. Luckily she only had trace amounts so I was able to at least take a breath. I kissed their sweet heads, and headed back to bed.
6am: The dog started whining, I could hear Ollie rummaging around in his room, and Walker came into our room for a cuddle. Blood sugars at this point were thankfully back in the 100s. Another sleepless night, however, another night we made it through. I’ll take that.
