This new adventure has come with a fabulous side effect....snuggle time!! In the hospital, Boogie and I spent a lot of time snuggling in bed watching movies and the Olympics. Never for a moment was I thankful he was in the hospital, but I was thoroughly enjoying the one-on-one downtime. Boogie has never really been a snuggler. Even as a newborn baby, he didn't like to be rocked, he just liked to be put into his bed and allowed to get to sleep on his own. He's a very loving kiddo and gives hugs and kisses and 5 minute snuggles all the time, but never anything like this. He's got way too much to do and explore to sit still for that long! But, one afternoon in the hospital we layed through an entire movie, just quiet and cuddled up!
I'm very excited to report that this new habit has followed us home. He loves to cuddle on the couch or cozy up in bed with me. As we lay there he says "lub you!" I think because I said it so much in the hospital, just laying there rubbing his back telling him again and again that I love him, he thinks that when you snuggle, you say "I love you." It melts my heart every time.
Due to our new schedule and routine, Boogie and I get regular snuggle time now. For the time being, we have to check his glucose levels two hours after every dose of insulin. So this means, he eats lunch and gets insulin (at around 11:45) and then we have to wait 2 hours and check his glucose (at around 1:45). For a long time now, Boogie has been taking his afternoon nap at around 1pm. Unfortunately, this is only about an hour after he gets his insulin. We've decided it would be better to keep him up for another 45 minutes than to put him down and have to wake him up to poke his finger. So, once C-Monk goes down for a nap around one, Boogie and I snuggle in bed for an hour/45 minutes every afternoon. We watch the Olympics or anything we can find interesting on Netflix, nuzzle into each other and say "lub you!" over and over. Best.Part.Of.My.Day!
I called into the Diabetes Clinic yesterday as instructed when we left the hospital. They wanted to see how things were going and what all his numbers were looking like. Truthfully, his numbers are all over the place. His glucose levels bounce around from 67-467 and back again. Which I'm told is normal for a newly diagnosed diabetic, especially one that's only 2 y/o. We were seeing a few trends such as always being really high after breakfast and always crashing down during the night. The doctor I talked to tried to explain these two phenomenons and also provide some ideas to correct them.
First, a possible reason why he's so high after breakfast is that because it has been so long since he's eaten (>12 hours) his body is trying to hang onto as much as possible, worried about when it might get to eat next. Makes sense. So we decided to change his insulin ratio for breakfast. An insulin ratio is the ratio of units of insulin needed to grams of CHO (Carbohydrates) consumed. In the hospital they assigned him an insulin ratio of 1/30, meaning for every 30 grams of CHO he consumes he needs 1 unit of insulin. So, because he's always been so high after breakfast, we changed this ratio (for breakfast only) to 1/25, hoping to get him an extra 0.5 units of insulin with breakfast. This will hopefully help to pull that extra glucose out of his blood stream and into his organs...or at least in theory....of course, that's not exactly how it went today....
In regards to his "crashing" at night, meaning his glucose levels drop drastically through the night, the doctor hypothesized that this may be due to Boogie's "honeymoon" period. In order to explain "honeymoon period" I'll need to give you a brief lesson in Type 1 Diabetes (T1D). T1D is an autoimmune disease with no known cause. It means that your body's defense system is attacking your own cells. In the case of T1D, it is attacking the beta cells (insulin producing cells) in your pancreas. Insulin is a hormone that acts as an air traffic controller of sorts, moving the glucose in your blood into the body's various cells to be used for energy and function. As these beta cells get destroyed, they in turn, loose their ability to create insulin. Without insulin, the glucose in your blood can't be moved into the cells, thus being left to build up in the blood stream. In newly diagnosed diabetics, it's common to still have some functioning beta cells. When synthetic insulin is introduced into the body, these remaining beta cells shut down and relax as they are not needed. Eventually, these beta cells will "wake up" for a period of time and begin functioning again. This is referred to as the "honeymoon period" and presents as sudden 'crashes' in blood glucose levels. Boogie's 'honeymoon' period may be occurring during the nighttime hours. While the rest of his body is at rest, these beta cells are kicking into gear again and producing insulin, and thus, in conjunction with the synthetic insulin we're giving him this causes extra glucose to be pulled out of his blood stream. This doesn't mean that he is cured! These last beta cells will eventually be destroyed as well, thus the term "honeymoon," it only lasts a short while. The temporary solution we decided on is to "carb up" before bed. This means giving him a 15g CHO snack before bed without dosing him with insulin. This will increase his blood glucose levels enough so that when he does drop down during the night, he won't fall into hypoglycemic levels.
Wow, I feel like I've completed the first edition of Rosetta Stone: Diabetes.....that was a brand new language I just spoke....
As to not make this all about Boogie, C-Monk is making strides of her own...literally. She can climb all the way up the stairs all by herself now. So, looks like it's time to put the gate up at the bottom again! She's also finally attempting the hands and knees crawl. For a couple months now, she's become a master of the army crawl and can move as fast as a cheetah. So, I think she's been a little lazy to attempt the hands and knees crawl since she can get everywhere she wants to already. But, over the last few days, there's been a few times she's pushed up and crawled like a person...
All right, life is calling....there's laundry to fold and dishes to wash...
No comments:
Post a Comment