Merry Chrsitmas and I Hate Diabetes

I am so behind on updating...I still need to post about Thanksgiving, for crying out loud! I will upload todays photos and catch up on old posts here in the next day or two. We have had my mom here since Tuesday, and have been enjoying lots of sledding...until the rain today :(. But the snow should resume tomorrow. It has been nice staying home all day. Times like Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are days that I wish diabetes would blend into the background as it does most days....it never goes away, but it is not usually front and center. Then yesterday and today happened. We changed Katie's pump site yesterday morning on schedule. The pump is what delivers her insulin, replacing the injections...one poke every three days, and then we just hit some buttons and she gets her insulin. It doesn't replace the finger pokes, though (8-10 per day)....anyway, every so often, a pump site is "bad"--it hits muscle or a blood vessel, or the little tube that goes into her gets kinked, and for any of these reasons, she won't absorb the insulin. We discover this b/c her blood sugar shoots high and won't come down. She feels lousy. Well, yesterday, we went through FOUR pump sites....finally in the evening, it seemed good. Whew! We still had a little wrapping left to do (actually, it was alot), and Joe gave the kids strict instructions not to get out of bed and come to our room. They were not to come past the stairs. Katie is sleeping in the basement at the moment because her room is the guestroom. This morning, she had a low blood sugar, but being the obedient daughter she is, she sat on the stairs calling for us. Oops! Well, we gave her a little sugar and got on with the gift opening. A few hours later, she was quite high...hmmm...what's up with that? No worries, though, b/c we know she is getting her insulin b/c she was low just an hour before. So we give her some more insulin and wait. Just before breakfast, with our decidedly not-low-carb Christmas morning cinnamond rolls, I checked her again, sure that her blood sugar had come down. Nope. She was now dangerously high (470), and I have no idea at all why this pump site failed. GRRRHHH! The poor kid. She said she would just rather just go back on shots for the day. She hates shots compared to the pump, and it totally bugs me that yesterday and today were the days that things went all wacky on her. She has been unbelievably good-natured through it all, though. I hate diabetes. In spite of all of that, we have had a very nice day at home with my mom and all six of us. Thanks to our wonderfully generous family, it was a great Christmas for the kids, and we are truly grateful. The quote of the day from Katie (being 11, her Christmas list has changed dramatically from just a few years ago...it included clothing, jewelry, accessories, room decorations, art supplies)...she said, "I didn't get any toys this year." I said, "Ummmm, that is because you didn't ask for any." She said, "Oh, yeah ."

Merry Christmas!