Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Pumping Update-How's it going?

We've technically have been pumping for 11 days now, including our 5 days of saline. We are one week shy of actually pumping "live" on insulin. So you might ask and wonder "how's it going"... For the most part everything is going great. The first three days it was like his pancreas woke up and decided that it no longer wanted to be lazy, but the actuality of it was we had a new "robotic" pancreas to help us with this. His numbers were nothing short of beautiful, with exception to 3 lows in the 50s each day. Then the weekend came along, and he headed to his dad's and his basal rate for 7am to 6pm was changed from 0.3 to 0.2...

That and coupled with the fact that the beautiful weather we were experiencing decided to die out on us as well, he started having a few "highs", boy how I hated to see those highs mixed in with the "beautiful numbers". Sunday rolled around, he was high 306 2.5 hours after eating dinner at his dad's and getting a site change earlier in the day. I checked the tubing, checked the site, all looked well, so he had a snack, I corrected and sent him outside to "work off" the high as I call it. An hour later after some hard playing he was 72... Quite a drop for him, but at least we ruled out a site problem. I was beginning to contemplate a site change before bedtime if he was still high. Up until bedtime I couldn't seem to get him higher than 86 (all that great exercise you know) this lead me to believe we would be seeing some delayed lows during the night. When I checked him at 10:30 however he shot right back up to 316. Honestly that absolutely made no sense to me, so I washed his fingers and retested. Still high 309..... SO I made the decision to correct. I can see letting a lower 200s, or mid 200s ride until the midnight check, but I didn't like seeing him over 300, not with his new "robot pancreas". But with it being the first correction at night (YIKES), and knowing his past experience with a lot of humalog at night dropping him. I backed off the 1.7 units the pump recommended and went with 1 unit.. I made sure to retest within and hour and a half to see just how much he was coming down. He was showing 285, then at 3am he was 256.. At wake up he was 230, still high but much better than the 300s. School went good for the most part except when snack time came along and he was 295! Tested him after school, for ketones too, just to be sure. No ketones (okay sites good I thought), this time no correction (too close to dinner) just sent him outside to run off the high again. It worked he came down to 77. Now dinner time rolled around, and I honestly was too tired to prepare anything wonderful so we had PIZZA! Pizza always makes me nervous because of the fat and it's ability to make him higher for a long time. Thankfully at bedtime he was 86(again), do you see where I'm going with this now?

At 10:30 he was 275, 12:30 he was over 300 (again) so corrected him again, this time I got a little more comfortable and gave him 1.2 units (pump suggested 1.6). 3am he was still in the 200s (can't remember the number right now) but at wakeup today he was 183 (much better, still above target but under 200).. A call into his CDE and she adjusted his basals for midnight increased from 0.3 to 0.35, and at 6pm increased 0.3 to 0.35. Here's hoping this helps. I however have a feeling that once the weekend rolls around and he is home and the weather is nicer that he will get back into range and possibly lower. Got to love diabetes. Definitely no consistency ever!