Today I am thankful for a baby who won’t sleep

Please don't change color....Please don't change color...Please don't cha...damn.
Image | Public-domain

Sometimes, a crying baby can be a good thing.

After staying up late last night to clean the house in preparation for my older son’s fifth birthday party today, I finally got to sleep around 1 am. Of course, cleaning the house leads to low blood sugars (which, for some odd reason makes me want to clean the house), so by the time I went to bed I was riding a smooth 130 mg/dl because of an overcorrection from the low and insulin on-board to correct the overcorrection.

A couple of times overnight, my Medtronic pump/CGM woke me with a “high predicted” alert. That makes sense, considering the night I had. Bolus a correction (without turning on the lights to do a proper fingerstick test) and go back to bed. Too tired to do anything else.

Then, at five-thirty in the morning: “WAAAAAAAHHHH!”. Baby Z, age 3 months, wakes up my wife and me. Since my wife, and not I, is biologically equipped to feed him, I seize the opportunity to turn on the light and check my blood sugar the proper way. (My CGM, less than a day young, is reading 180). The meter says 315. 315?! In disbelief, I waste another strip and check it again (One Touch, my ass!)…. 281. Better, but still bad. Are 281 and 315 within the allowable 20% tolerance, I wonder? 28 times two, carry the one…. ahh, the hell with it. It doesn’t matter. I run downstairs to grab my emergency-supply Ziploc bag from my jacket pocket (where I keep insulin, extra pump supplies, and ketone sticks).

My pump site doesn’t feel in the least bit irritated, but I’ll try the pee-on-a-stick test anyway. With apologies to Prince (I have a way of associating various D-events to music), the strip was all purple, there were ketones running everywhere. Guess it’s time for a set-change in my half-asleep state. But first, six units by syringe. (Why six? That’s what one CDE told me to do when I’ve got no insulin on-board. Illogical, but simple. Another told me the mathematical formula, which I forget, on how to figure out how much to take).

This may sound a bit strange, perhaps even sadistic, but that BD Ultra-Fine did feel mighty comfortable. Smooth. I’d forgotten what an old fashioned needle feels like since I began using Silhouettes and SofSensors harpoons and daggers. No wonder some people like MDI so much.

To make a long story short, new set in place, BG still in the 300s, now back to bed. Cause I’m exhausted and I’m hosting a bunch of kids and their parents for a birthday party tomorrow. But first… buzzzz… a reminder that I need to calibrate my CGM in an hour. Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen. Probably the worst time for a calibration.

…

In the end, my blood sugar was pretty good during the day and the party was a success. The kids loved the music of Big Jeff, and my blood sugar even got low enough that I got to treat myself to some birthday cake. It could’ve been a lot worse.

Thanks, baby Z, for waking me up. Somehow, you always seem to know the right time.