November 1st JDRF T1D Day

November is Diabetes Awareness month. Today makes 4 months since Elyssa's Type 1 Diabetes Diagnosis. She has a cold with congestion & a runny nose. For children without diabetes a slight cold isn't really a big deal but for us it's scary. I have to prick Elyssa's finger more often to make sure her Blood Glucose levels aren't going crazy. We are pushing & watching everything she eats more closely so we make sure she has the right amount of insulin & drinks tons of water to flush life threatening Ketones from her body. These Ketones are what caused Elyssa to be in Diabetic Ketoacidosis when she was diagnosed. If they're not watched she can go into a diabetic coma or they can cause death.
I really don't know if her body/brain could handle being in Diabetic Ketoacidosis again in such a short time. After Diagnosis she wouldn't talk she would just point and make grunting noises or baby talk. That was really scary I totally thought she had brain damage but doctors said we had to wait 3 months to do testing to see if she did have brain damage. I was glad that after a month she started saying some more words and 2 months later she was able to say sentences. So one little cold has brought back all these emotions and feelings of when she was in Diabetic Ketoacidosis.
I hope that diabetes awareness month does help get the word out there that Diabetes can happen to anyone at any age. I hope that media can catch wind of it and talk about it on every channel. Children with Type 1 diabetes are dying from its complications. I see all these campaigns right now about bullying. Well I would love to see commercials about Diabetes Awareness too and how important finding a cure is. I was trying to think of what I could do or say today to try and spread awareness and the thoughts just brought tears to my eyes. I wish we didn't have to spread awareness about this chronic disease. Why can't people see how important the need for a cure is? I wish Elyssa was never diagnosed with Diabetes, I wish nobody had Type 1 Diabetes, I wish we didn't have to live with the fear of all it's complications everyday, I wish it would just go away, I wish there was a cure for it!

Elyssa's JDRF Video

I keep forgetting to post this video here on my blog. I was going to update her JDRF video now that we've starting pumping but I really haven't had the time. So I'm just going to leave it as it is and next year I can update it. So here it is and I still tear up when I see it knowing everything we've been through these past couple months.

We are up & Pinging it.

So Elyssa's butt is now hotwired. She is hooked up to the Animas Ping & the Dexcom. I swear it's almost like the first week she was diagnosed. I was sweating, shaking and 4 hours later my chest is still pounding like crazy.
Elyssa fought & kicked then fell right asleep and it wasn't bed time. She was at 87 then 85, Dex had her at 76 with arrows down. I already knew I had to wake her up because there's no way I could let her sleep the whole night at 85. Well she woke up and wanted to eat everything in the fridge. I tried to give her low carb items but nooooo she wanted the thing I hate the most.. a quesadilla.
I've tried to rock the tortilla to insulin ratio but I always lose. Well whats one more lost battle she's at 85 right. Damn 2 triangles of quesadilla she shot right up. I was upset at myself because I still think like I'm using insulin pens and that I have to wait to see how much she's actually going to eat before I give insulin. Before she was done with the 2nd triangle I give some insulin. Voila.... insulin given. No fighting, no kicking no running around trying to find the insulin pen, pen needle & alcohol pad. A little anxiety went away with the ease of giving insulin but I'm still afraid to give too much so I held back and the tortilla won again. She shot up to 300. Crap!! It's okay though after 2 weeks of pumping I want a rematch tortilla and we'll see who wins.

No more shots, Don't want the flu shot this year. Thank You

Are Flu shots mandatory now??? I keep getting recorded messages that my daughter needs a recommended immunization. Then it says flu shots are important to keeping her healthy. I feel like telling that fucking recording well guess what 3 days after last years flu & H1N1 shot she got sick, her asthma kicked in and she was hospitalized. Now she has diabetes and gets shots every day. That Flu shot didn't really keep her healthy now did it. She had so many colds last year. I know the Flu shot doesn't cover colds but when it does then they could say it will help keep her healthy. I have received recorded messages from the Pediatrician, Health insurance and the state. WTF I even got 2 letters in the mail telling me that flu shots are now available and she needs one.
This year since its our 1st year with Diabetes I wanted to make sure she was covered for everything and I did want to get her a flu shot but she has been fighting us on all of her shots. We are tired of struggling so I don't want to traumatize her once more this year and get the flu shot. We will be skipping the flu shot this year. Hope the Pediatrician, Health Insurance & State don't send the police. I just don't understand the pressure or the persistence of pushing for us to get her flu shot.

Pump Training Tomorrow

Tomorrow we have our pump training for Elyssa's new pump. We watched the video today I sort of went through the handbook. I had a short attention span and kept forgetting where I was reading so I gave up. Elyssa has been really fighting us when we try to give her insulin injections lately. Pumping can't come soon enough. I said before I am afraid to give up the 24hr long acting Levimir for short acting basal insulin. I'm afraid we will get more lows. I'm also worried she is not going to handle having the pump on her 24/7 but we shall see. I think she's smart and will rather the pump with a site change every 3 days rather than shots 4-5x a day. I'm really sick of all the up & down BG numbers that Diabetes causes. Last week we got tons of highs now we're having big drops and lows this week. It's really depressing when you try so hard to get good numbers but Elyssa is so sensitive and bounces around all over the place. So today I was good with her numbers. We didn't have anything over 250. Yay.
Todays BGs were
2am 187
4am 153
7am 59
11am 56
2:30pm 242
3:30pm 144
5pm 131
8pm 142
10:30pm 209

Not proud of the lows but sometimes it's hard to get them back up. I think we did a good job with Elyssa's BG levels today. I hope we can do a good job with the pump too.