Our Lantus Adventure

Whew! Now that vacation's over I need a vacation! We all had such a great time beaching and boating and playing with cousins (and playing and playing and playing... I barely saw my kids - am I aloud to say that I loved that part?)

The only thing wrong with this picture is that 3 of my nieces aren't in it. WE MISSED YOU C AND G!!! Sorry you had to work, S.

Highlights included the trampoline time, our intra-family swim race (won by Uncle M), fishing on Uncle D's boat, rides on the boardwalk, a visit by Donna E. (my childhood babysitter who we only see on special occasions anymore), and lots and lots of extended family time.


Grace, after she caught probably the smallest stripped bass in the bay!

As I mentioned before, our diabetes action plan worked pretty well. Going on Lantus shots for the week made it much easier on the beach, not having to worry about sand getting in the pump. It was a bit cumbersome when we had to bolus her - we had to remove the film we put over the site for protections, bolus, then immediately reapply a new film, all while keeping sand off the site and anything sticky in the area. But, overall it worked well.

Her numbers, you ask? MUCH better than before. However, we did find ourselves fighting several lows, which have been pretty much non-existent in our house all summer.

Which brings me back to Lantus.

It worked well for what we needed - an option to help with our "what do we do with the pump at the beach" question. One shot of Lantus at bedtime provided 24 hours of basal insulin. But what we couldn't do was adjust her basal rate based on her needs or activities.

Usually, if Grace has had a particularly active day and seems to be running on the low side, I can lower her basal rate (the amount of insulin constantly dripping from her pump into her body to cover her steady need). More activity = less insulin needed. Her insulin pump allows for constant tweaking like this. A shot of Lantus = constant basal - no tweaking.

We arrived at her Lantus dosage based on recent basal adjustments we'd made. She'd been running high for weeks, which led to upping her basal rate on her pump. So 5 units of Lantus once a day was the dose. She did fine with this most of the days, but seemed to run low every night.

You know somethings wrong when we can't get her above 50 all night after pizza and ice cream!

Sleep was a rarity - blood sugar checks every two hours (sometimes more) pretty much every night. YUCK! I've never had to push the middle of the night juice like I did last week. But since I couldn't lower her basal rate to help offset the low, I had no choice but to "juice it." (Well, at least we WERE at the Jersey Shore! Get it? Steroids..."Juice"...please don't tell me you have to be from Jersey to get the joke!) We got to the point of feeding her Fig Newtons or yogurts at 2am to help raise and maintain her numbers. Didn't work.

So now we're back on the pump. Yesterday she was low all day. Why? Who knows. ABSOLUTELY. NO. ACTIVITY. Rest and relax day. Movies and indoor play. Low, low, low.

Today she's had a good day. Caught her once at 70, in time for a bolus-free snack. We'll see how tonight goes.

I'm tired. I need a D-cation.