Sickness

So, last week my six year-old daughter woke up with an excruciating earache. She screamed for hours and the following day she ran a little high, but presented ketones. I got them down with an increased basal rate, but in the meantime, I was awake with her several hours at night helping her manage the pain in her ear (nothing was working) until the doctor finally prescribed oral antibiotics. I slept about five hours a night for five nights.

Saturday, as the medicine began working for my daughter, I started to feel sick. My blood sugars were OK, but I had the most awful feeling in my head (between nose and throat). I took herbs, zinc, vitamin c and thought I would surely kick this sickness, after all I just don't get sick often. Sunday I was stuffy with a sore throat, still believing that I was about to ward the thing off, but then came Monday.

Oh! I felt like total crap. Mild fever at 5:00 a.m., blood sugars beginning to soar, ketones with a blood sugar of 230. Sickness was here. I spent Monday morning ignoring that it was bad; I kept thinking it would be gone in a few hours and around 2:00 p.m. my CGM went dead.

I had a warning that my battery life had one week on it, but that warning was wrong and it died in three days. At this point, I ripped the thing off, because you can't just replace the battery, you have to change out the sensor too. I fell asleep for four hours and woke up feverish and miserable. My ketones were now high and I had to go back to finger sticks.

Somehow I mustered the energy to change my infusion set (which I thought might be occluded), give myself a shot to counter my 300 blood sugar; I replaced the sensor and batteries in the receiver and went back to sleep. That was exhausting!

I did this from my bed with a 102 fever and I swear, it is never just one thing with diabetes. It is the infusion set, your are out of strips for your meter, you can't find a battery, the control solution has disappeared, you are out of juice AND milk; all your syringes are gone, the prescriptions aren't refilled, the insulin fell on the floor and broke open (and you don't have a refill at the pharmacy). I've just come to expect to sit down with every supply I own, because one issue leads to another and I really hate getting up to look for one more thing..

So, the smartest thing I did was get my hubby to call the doctor and get me medicine last night. If they worked for my daughter, they would work for me and here I sit, fever free (although rambling a bit).

My CGM wanted calibration at 3:00 a.m., and I was 60, the lowest I've been in sometime, as I get a warning at 65 and usually correct it immediately. So I had to check again in 20 minutes and again at 5:30 a.m., but I was so glad to know it was on and working.

Last night I slept 11 hours and today I did nothing. This blog is the most I did and it was nice to be quiet, even though I can't breathe through my nose. My dear sweet husband bought me tissue with lotion in it; I never really knew how valuable that gift could be.

Photo from www.parody.org/.../tissue_box_cosy/index.html, where you can learn to make your own fuzzy tissue cozy!