Friday, November 7, 2008

Note to self:

Always be prepared. Always. It doesn't matter if you are just running to the nearest corner store. It doesn't matter if you are taking a quick walk around the block. Be prepared! Have more than enough to treat a typical low.

Cooler weather= changes for Maddison. She is having alot of lows. ALOT. Changed some things around. Still low. Same old Diabetes drama. I picked her up at school on Friday as usual except this time she was waiting out a low in the Nurse's office. She had been treated twice in thirty minutes for a persistant low. Hmmm. Very unusual for her. We headed straight to the mall to buy shoes and gear to prepare for Hannah's Club Volleyball tryouts this weekend. Within 20 minutes Maddison felt low. She was again 62 for the forth time all day. Treated the 62 with the last juice box in my purse. She is just 1.5 hours after lunch and had already been treated at school with 20c total so at this point so I was really starting to wonder if she may be getting sick. 20 min later, low again in the 60's. We need a time out to check her pump and figure out what the heck is going on. Give her the last 3 glucose tablets from my purse. Check pump history. Basal rate looks good, decreased from yesterday. Bolus history......WHAT THE HELL!!?? @#$#@#!!!!! Right there, plain as day it shows she was bolused twice for her lunch. Her lunch was around 50c, she was bolused twice.....100c!!!! Thank GOD she is the last class at school to have lunch or the nurse's office would be left treating a potential SERIOUS low while I was at work.

I was feeling very panicked knowing that by timing, her insulin is just about to peak at the 2 hour mark from lunch. Calmly (but with panic!) I called Dad and Hannah to come sit with Maddison. As soon as I was the next aisle over and out of view I took off running for the nearest ANYTHING! I'm guessing I looked like a shoplifter running through the store dodging through clothing racks, avoiding crowds and running down the escalator. You just don't care about people's stares at that point. Within 30 seconds I made it to a Pretzel Time and purchased two regular sodas and dashed back upstairs. She's 42 and looks horrible. Half a soda is all it took to get her back up to a lovely 108, I was surprised it was going to be that easy. I purchased some M&M's for her to munch and she happily recovered chatting away while I had to sit and calm my frazzeled nerves. The highest she went after this fiasco was 118 three hours later. Yikes.

I called the nurse's office to see how this happened AGAIN. I wanted to make sure they know I wasn't angry but more concerned of how this mistake could happen more than once this school year. It was a simple mistake, I caught it, but I needed to know if Maddison wasn't speaking up when they bolused her twice. She is supposed to be bolused half her lunch up front and then they bolus the remainder after lunch. The nurse explained that she multiplied by two instead of dividing her lunch by two. She was bolused today by the nurse, which normally Maddison enters her bolus under her supervision. Mistakes happen. I felt bad pointing it out to our nurse, she felt so horrible.

Note to self: Just when you think a few glucose tablets always do the trick, a mistake pops up and reminds you otherwise. If we see persistant lows I will promise to always check the bolus history before assuming we dosed just right. I promise to carry extra everything in my purse, especially being that there's two of us. Lesson learned.

2 comments:

Beth said...

ARGH! It's the stuff like this take makes us turn gray, I think. Does the nurse not have a handle on carb ratios for Maddi? I know that our health tech will call me if it seems like M is getting too high a dose; she's got a pretty good handle on how much seems like a rational amount for Meg's lunches. Maybe having her review what the ratio is for lunch will help her to clue in to how many units are going to be about right....but then again, maybe not. I know accidents and mistakes can happen, but having a knowledge of what is a reasonable dose will help to prevent them.

Scott K. Johnson said...

Yikes! That is major scary! Glad she was able to pull out of it without too much trouble. No fun for you though!