Good news! We went to the Diabetes Clinic yesterday and Alyssa's A1C went from 8.3% to 7.8%! Just goes to show you the pump is working much better than insulin shots.
For those who don't know, here's a definition what A1C is:
a test that measures a person's average blood glucose level over the past 2 to 3 months. Hemoglobin (HEE-mo-glo-bin) is the part of a red blood cell that carries oxygen to the cells and sometimes joins with the glucose in the bloodstream. ...
Her goal for this past visit was to get below 8% (which we did!) and they want to keep her as close to 7% as possible so we keep her healthy long term.
When she was diagnosed she was 13.8%.
A child without diabetes runs around 4.6% on average.
Small victories.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The kids on Easter
Here are pictures of the kids on Easter! I have more when they were dying eggs with me and daddy, so I'll post those later. :)
Easter was wonderful. We dyed eggs on Saturday (Christian thought we were "killing the eggs"), on Sunday morning the kids found their Easter baskets. Alyssa got a new Wii game called "World of Zoo" (she's so into video games, any sort of game really!), a chocolate Easter bunny and some sugarfree gum. Christian got a new Diego toy (he plays make believe with things a lot more than Alyssa does), a chocolate Easter bunny and sugarfree gum. The Easter bunny left them candy in their eggs, except for Alyssa, she got money. The darn Easter bunny though, hid 10 eggs for each of the kids and we could only find 19! That Easter bunny... forgets where he hides his own eggs... sheesh...
Afterwards we headed to church for a wonderful service with Papa Dave and Nana. Papa Roger was unfortunately out of town on business. Afterwards we headed to Nana's house and had a wonderful, big breakfast, watched "The 10 Commandments" and then later in the day we took the kids with Papa Dave to see "How to Train Your Dragon" in 3D. Very good movie!!!
It was a wonderful Easter, and a wonderful celebration of the selfless love of our Lord, sending His son to bridge the gap between Himself and us. Thank God for that.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
Sometimes it's so surprising
We went to Alyssa's 6 year physical at her regular pediatrician today. She's growing like a weed, 51 lbs, 46 1/8" - right on track with where she should be. She's amazing, she's beautiful. She had glucose in her urine which signaled high blood sugar - sure enough, 417 when we pricked her finger. She's been having major highs every day before lunch. Time to call the endocrinologist and make some adjustments.
As we were sitting in the pediatician talking with him - the office where she has gone for her whole life and we've been so many times - grief kind of overtook me and I got emotional. Sometimes I feel like we're living in some kind of nightmare and we're going to wake up sooner or later and Alyssa will have normal blood sugars, she won't have Diabetes anymore and everything will be "normal" again.
Dr. Davies (ped) told us that we need to be more worried about many low blood sugars since they bring seizures, comas and could even bring death; but the high blood sugars are dangerous for the long term affects for Alyssa.
It's like being on a seesaw and having to keep it perfectly level at all the time. But you can't, you can't do it.
It's exhausting and sometimes I look back and go, Oh my gosh... this is my life. This is my daughter's life. This is our reality. And it hurts.
As we were sitting in the pediatician talking with him - the office where she has gone for her whole life and we've been so many times - grief kind of overtook me and I got emotional. Sometimes I feel like we're living in some kind of nightmare and we're going to wake up sooner or later and Alyssa will have normal blood sugars, she won't have Diabetes anymore and everything will be "normal" again.
Dr. Davies (ped) told us that we need to be more worried about many low blood sugars since they bring seizures, comas and could even bring death; but the high blood sugars are dangerous for the long term affects for Alyssa.
It's like being on a seesaw and having to keep it perfectly level at all the time. But you can't, you can't do it.
It's exhausting and sometimes I look back and go, Oh my gosh... this is my life. This is my daughter's life. This is our reality. And it hurts.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Pumping!
Alyssa got hooked up on a Minimed Medtronic pump on Feb. 9! It's been going great. We've had 3 site failures, but that's to be expected and I think we're learning and we'll get this down. It's SO much better than shots! She can eat much more normally now and it gives me and David a little bit more freedom.
Here's a picture of our Lissy Lou Lou with the pump catheter hooked up!
Here's a picture of our Lissy Lou Lou with the pump catheter hooked up!
Friday, January 29, 2010
To be understood
Tonight I got to talk with a woman who runs a support group for families that have children with Type 1 Diabetes. Her name is Pam. We talked for an hour. I cried. It was so nice to talk with someone who understands.
Friday, January 8, 2010
The pump trial
So on Tuesday we went to the Diabetes Center and got to experience what an insulin pump will be like. They showed us the pump (it looks exactly like a pager) and then told us what it'll do. Basically it's going to take away all shots for Alyssa! Currently Alyssa gets 1 shot of Lantus in the morning, that's her long acting insulin that covers her for 24 hours. She gets Novolog her short acting insulin after every meal and snack. She'll no longer have either! The pump will give her a continious dose of basal insulin (Lantus) and then we control when she gets her bolus insulin (Novolog). It's going to be great.
When we told Alyssa we were going to hook the pump up to her, she was fine with it until we had to put the tubing in. She was scared, and she cried. I cried along with her. She's such a brave girl and has dealt so well with all of this, I'm surprised she hasn't cried more. I've cried much much more than she has, so has David. My heart aches for my little girl.
We got her all set up on the pump, the tubing and all. The tubing isn't very big at all, just looks like a little needle point and it doesn't go too far in her. It's stuck on there really good with what looks like a circular bandaid and then she has a plastic piece protruding from it that the tubing connects to and attaches to her the actual pump. That tubing site gets changed every 3 days. We can remove the tubing and pump if she wants to swim, or when she has a bath or shower.
She kind of freaked out when it was in her belly at first, the color drained out of her face and she was breathing quite rapidly. It really scared me, but she soon calmed down. After wearing the pump for 2 days and us playing around with it (it had just saline water running through it) she told us she most definitely wants a pump! And in PINK! :)
We ordered one from Medtronic. http://www.minimed.com/index.html The people at Medtronic really got the ball rolling, got it through our insurance and it should be here maybe as soon as next week! We can't wait!!!
When we DO get it, we'll have to go 4 days in a row to the Diabetes Clinic to get everything set up and going.
I'll keep you all updated on this process, along with pictures!
When we told Alyssa we were going to hook the pump up to her, she was fine with it until we had to put the tubing in. She was scared, and she cried. I cried along with her. She's such a brave girl and has dealt so well with all of this, I'm surprised she hasn't cried more. I've cried much much more than she has, so has David. My heart aches for my little girl.
We got her all set up on the pump, the tubing and all. The tubing isn't very big at all, just looks like a little needle point and it doesn't go too far in her. It's stuck on there really good with what looks like a circular bandaid and then she has a plastic piece protruding from it that the tubing connects to and attaches to her the actual pump. That tubing site gets changed every 3 days. We can remove the tubing and pump if she wants to swim, or when she has a bath or shower.
She kind of freaked out when it was in her belly at first, the color drained out of her face and she was breathing quite rapidly. It really scared me, but she soon calmed down. After wearing the pump for 2 days and us playing around with it (it had just saline water running through it) she told us she most definitely wants a pump! And in PINK! :)
We ordered one from Medtronic. http://www.minimed.com/index.html The people at Medtronic really got the ball rolling, got it through our insurance and it should be here maybe as soon as next week! We can't wait!!!
When we DO get it, we'll have to go 4 days in a row to the Diabetes Clinic to get everything set up and going.
I'll keep you all updated on this process, along with pictures!
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