new discoveries

I supplied the venue for an Insulin Pump information session last night at my clinic The Calgary Centre for Health. We will sometimes open up our facility to different interest groups, providing a free space to host a seminar. I had boatloads of stuff I had to get through at the office, so spending a few extra hours at the clinic last night wasn't a bad idea. There was about 20 people, there mostly parents of diabetic children. Very few people get to spend an evening with a bunch of strangers but be intimately connected through a condition. It's really kind of comforting to be in the presence of so many that know the struggle, it's an affirmation that while wandering the house at 2am looking for test strips, infusion sets, batteries, juice boxes, and hail Mary's....there's someone close by doing the same thing. The mid-day yawn and eye rub could almost be the universal handshake of diabetes.

Animas brought in Lorraine Anderson, a certified Diabetes educator and fellow pumper. The brain trust of Ward Clark, territory Manager for Alberta, the great Joe Solowiejczyk, and Teresa from the Alberta Children's Hospital were among us in attendance. The content discussed was far more in depth than just how great pumps are for managing diabetes. We chatted about matching food to insulin blousing, how to really take advantage of combination boluses, pizza bolus, super bolus, all of these great concepts that many of us have heard of but been too nervous to experiment with. Lorraine did an amazing job of empowering the group to have some "fun" with diabetes, see if you can out-think the beast. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about insulin pumping, but found myself completely engaged and fascinated by the discussion. In fact, texting the discussion with Nicole to make sure we remembered the information. It was a really great discussion and to be honest, I found it exciting...which is so lame, but it's true! The opportunity to come at Cadence's disease from some different angles. We touched on a fair bit of topics that are frowned upon by some CDE's but in this discussion, we learned the reasons why we all do it incognito. For instance, pre-bolusing 20 minutes, overriding the pump recommendations based on instinct and experience, acceptable blood glucose departures 2 hours post meal, etc. It was great. The only issue I have this morning is that pile of stuff I had to do last night....is still sitting on my desk but i'm going to try and attack it from a couple new angles.

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D-mergency

Even when I tried to put in the title, the blogger program changed the first letter to E.  Nobody understands :)

"Captain, we've got a D-mergency....Ketone field dead ahead, take evasive action"

The D-mergency is something that diabetics and their caregivers know all too well.  It's sort of the secret handshake that you'd rather not know.  The D-mergency is often associated with Murphy's Law as well.  We were at a birthday part last night for one of Cadence's friends.  First birthday party with kids, cake, pizza, and soda.  We were so excited to let her experience these foods for the first time and to see the power of the insulin pump in terms of dealing with these carbs.  We were all set, pump was going, infusion site did fine all day, as soon as we hit the front door apparently the infusion site decided it was finished...or Cadence's body felt that she was finished with it and it scarred over.  1 hour into the party before any food was put out she hit 20.3 on her meter, 4 times the normal range.  She felt like (or so I perceive) she just downed 5 big gulps.  She played quietly and jumped anxiously everytime anything around her made a sound, cried uncontrollably at the site of a party hat, weird stuff.  Back to Murphy's law...the one time we leave the house without a backup syringe/insulin/infusion set...is when we need to use it.

So, as the pizza was unboxed and after 2 corrections Cadence's sugar only climbed, we had to make our exit, take her away from the party to go and try to bring her sugar down.  We were all bummed out, it was a quiet ride home.  After we put in the new site, gave her a big bolus of insulin, her sugar started dropping and we had a little party at home.  Cadence had a taste of some frozen yogurt, danced to some music, and hit the sack a little later than normal.  Nic and I got ready for a long night of fighting the lows often associated with a high correction and a new infusion site.

We know the secret "D" handshake and every day wish that we didn't.  The trick is to make every attempt to use it as little as possible and make day to day life and normal and vibrant as possible.  Diabetes is a life ending disease without an obvious disability or a cure.  A great quote I read yesterday rings so true "you don't get time off for good behavior", you just have to try to keep the ship headed in the right direction.

For an awesome perspective on diabetes read this article on Jake Cutler, quarterback for the Denver Broncos.  We are officially Bronco fans now.

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