Tuesday, May 27, 2008

The highs and the lows...

Dealing with Ryann's diabetes most days just seems like second nature now a days. Sometimes it is hard to even remember life before she was diagnosed. Lately her blood sugar has been staying more in it's normal range, especially since before our trip to Spokane a couple weeks ago it had been staying on the high side.

Last night however she had a big low...I don't think I have seen it that low for quite some time. It got down to 44 (her normal range is 80-180) I think we must of miscalculated how many carbs she had taken in. Sometimes that happens, especially when it is something that is hard to measure or is homemade and has lots of different ingredients in it. It can be a little scary when it happens, and we were having a hard time getting her to take something to bring it back up. We finally got almost a full juice box down her (one of the smaller ones is about 15 carbs which is the perfect size for her), but we knew she still had some insulin working in her body and was going to need more than just 15 carbs to keep her up. When I checked her around 30 minutes later she was up to 76...which was alot better but still not where we wanted her at (at night we like to have her aroune 120). By than though she had woken up enough that she was getting pretty upset...which can be pretty heart wrenching at times. One second she is screaming at us to leave her alone that she doesn' t want anything and than the next she is saying help me mama...it almost made me cry! I finally coaxed a few life savers down her (along with the juice box) and by the time she was on the second one she was starting to settle down (the sugar was starting to raise her up). After I had finally gotten the last life saver down her and got her back to sleep it was about 11:30. When Doug got up to go to work around 5:00 this morning he checked her blood sugar and it was around 71 so he gave her another juice box, so by the time she got up this morning around 7:30 she was 146...which is perfect for me!

Some days it feels like we are just doing a guessing game of some sort. There are days where her blood sugar will be perfect all day and than the next day it just goes haywire..even if we are doing the exact same thing we had done the day before. So we are constantly juggling her blood sugar and her insulin ratio's.

Then there are the days where I still can't believe my little girl has diabetes and I admit I wallow a bit in self pity and just want to cry. It just seems so unfair at times that these things happen. But than I have to snap myself out of it and start thinking positively because the last thing I want for my little girl is for her to start feeling self pity because she has diabetes. And for the most part it really doesn't seem to affect her. She just deals with it, but than I think it helps that we have had a good attitude about it and so she just goes along with it! I know I would trade places with her in a heatbeat though if I could. I just always have to keep the faith and hope that soon they will find a cure for diabetes and she won't ever have to get poked to have her blood sugar tested or injected with insulin again. And they have come along way already in their research and are coming up with so many new things, so I just have to keep praying that one day soon the doctor will be calling us up and telling us to bring Ryann in for her cure! And then we won't have to watch her like a hawk and count every carb and just let her be a normal kid again. So that is my big wish for her. We try very hard to make sure that her diabetes doesn't leave her out of things, but there are times when she can't have what other kids are having because it has too many carbs for her snack or she just ate and already had a shot, etc... One thing I really appreciated about her teacher this year was that when it was someone's birthday and they were bringing treats she would encourage the parents to bring something that Ryann could have as well and since it is a wonderful school with many wonderful people nobody had a problem doing that.

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