Last night, around midnight, Kolbie's blood sugars started to go high. I went in and dosed her on her pump and waited a while. After three hours, she didn't come down at all, and when I pricked her finger to check where she was, it read 426 on the monitor. I finally woke her up and changed her pump to see if that was the problem.
High blood sugars cause the brain not to function normally. When I woke Kolbie up, she was not Kolbie. She was not thinking straight, mean, and out of it. She was convinced that she was high because she was sleeping on her Dexcom, which, as you know, causes pressures lows, never highs. I had to be patient with her because, in her mind, she wasn't that high, and she couldn't even think straight. It was such an odd behavior it scared me. I tried over and over again to remind her that I was trying to help her and that we needed her blood sugar to come down because we were flying out in the morning. We changed her pump and dosed her, and I had her return to bed.
When I went back to bed, my mind started racing. The pump on her before we stitched it had five units on board, and then we gave her another five units with the new pump. Ten units is a lot of insulin, I was so scared that I gave her too much and she would tank and have another low episode.
I started to Google everything I could to see if I did the right thing. I was a nervous wreck. I watched her sugars for the next two hours, and she VERY slowly came down but took 5 hours to come back into reasonable range.
I sat up thinking I didn't go to school for this. I haven't been trained in how to deal with diabetes. I'm not a nurse or doctor, but every day of my life, I'm put into scenarios where I feel like I have to play that role. Diabetes is HARD, and it's exhausting. It doesn't ever stop, and it will never go away. We always have to be on 24/7.
I share these hard moments because I know so many of you feel this, and I want you to know you aren't alone. Long nights saving your kid's life are exhausting both physically and mentally. I see you.