Pacifiers and Insulin

So the other day my parents shared a video on facebook from the Saving Luke facebook page.  Saving Luke is another Type 1 diabetic child that has a diabetic alert dog.  His mother runs the FB page and made a video about her son and their experience to raise awareness about Type 1.  Well I see the video shared on my parents page so I decided to play it.  Let me set the scene up for you... I am laying in bed with the computer typing out donation request for our benefit to raise funds for Cole's diabetic alert dog.  I take a break to look at FB and see my parents post.  I click on the video and start watching.... She starts by showing a picture of her son and saying that he came close to dying when he was 2.  Well that hits close to home.  Cole was 13 months when he was transported to the ER by ambulance. She talks about how Type 1 there is no cure and he will always have it.  How he gets finger pokes and injections all the time....

We got to drive down to Jasper, TX where Drey’s Alert Dogs is located yesterday.   We made the 4 ½ hour drive down there and got there in time to check into the hotel.   We decided since Cole had been stuck in the car for 4 ½ hours we would let him go to the pool for a few minutes.   So we took Cole to the swimming pool which was nice and warm.   It had a little rock fountain which Cole found amusing.   He loved to go over and splash on it.   For once we were not able to drag Cole out of the pool.   Guessing since it was more like bath water than freezing cold pool water.   Once inside we checked his BG level.   73… seriously.   The child is always high and now before bed he is 73.   (He is supposed to be much higher for bed time).   Robert starts freaking out that if we give him the whole 1.5 units of levemir (long lasting insulin) that we will definitely kill him in his sleep.   This was only going to be our second ...

You know those contest where they put items like gumballs into a container and they see who can guess how many gumballs are in the container.... well here is the Syringe Contest-- Guess how many shots Cole has received in the past 4 months   I am of course kidding... Too depressing to count how many shots the poor guy has received in the past few months.  I seriously need to learn the proper way to dispose of these suckers!

I am pretty sure Robert and Cole have come up with an evil plan that every time Robert goes out of town Cole will get sick.   I would have liked to think that Cole would not play along with what I am sure is Robert’s evil plan, but the past few times it appears that Cole likes his dad’s plan.   I can picture then both doing the evil laugh together. So Thursday, Robert left for Dallas and Friday Cole came down with a high fever.   I was checking him every 3 hours and giving him corrections.   Somehow even though Cole was in the 300s with his blood glucose level we managed to keep the ketones levels to trace or small.   Thank GOD!   That is until tonight.   Of course they go up to large amounts.   I was trying to pass them off as moderate but I walked around showing my mom and dad the pee strip and they both said it looked more like large.   UGH!!   I texted Robert to let him know again how happy I was that he was out of town. ...

We had Robert’s lovely trip to Rockport, TX the other week, so this past weekend was my trip to Galveston, TX.   Thursday the 11 th was Cole’s visit with his endo doctor.   The doctor decided it was best to change Cole’s long lasting insulin from a night shot of Lantus to a day shot of Levemir.   Friday the 12 th was our first day to try this .   We knew his numbers were going to be all over the place so I was second guessing whether or not we should go on our trip.   We decided to go to Galveston anyway and left Friday afternoon.   We arrived in time to go to bed.   At 2:00am we checked Cole’s bg level.   I don’t recall now what it was but it must have been normal because we did not give a correction shot.   At about 3:30 Cole began to cough.   Cole sleeps on his stomach and was coughing from that position.   I jumped up and sat him up (we were all sleeping in the same bed on this trip).   I sat him up and he began to ...

  Our first trip with the big D… and I don’t mean divorce or Dallas :   ) We recently took our first trip since Cole has been diagnosed with diabetes.   It went pretty well, besides the packing.   Not only did I have to make sure I packed everyone’s clothes, towels, sheets, blankets, pillows , water toys, life jacket, etc…. I had to make sure I packed the insulin bottles, the syringes, alcohol wipes, lancets, glucose meter, his frio bags to keep the insulin cool, test strips, cotton balls, ketones strips (as I type that I realize I forgot the ketone strips, thankfully we did not need them).   Oh the joys of packing.   Oh and not to mention his carb free snacks.   A trip isn’t complete without lunch meat and cheese.   I was so concerned with making sure I brought all his diabetes stuff, I forgot his swim diapers and his toothbrush and toothpaste… but I guess that’s what Walmart is for.   So we make our first stop on our road trip...

So when we found out Cole was diabetic we called his current daycare and asked if they would be able to accommodate his special needs.   They told us they would not.   Well I guess that is not exactly what they said… What they said was that if we could get a doctor to come to daycare and train them then they would.   We asked our doctors which of course said they cannot do that.   So the search began for a new daycare.   Luckily (and I can say that now), I had lost my job so I was at home when Cole was diagnosed… anyway, luckily I was at home so we had some time to find a new daycare.   We checked several places and they were either willing to do the shots and glucose checks and were really dirty daycares or they were nice daycares but had A LOT of hesitation about doing the shots. After talking with Robert, we decided we did not want to go to a place that had hesitations about giving the injections.   It’s already worrisome enough relying on so...