Just shoot me

January 5, 2012

I want to take a moment here and mention that the staff at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital Pediatric unit was phenomenal.  Seth was the only patient there for the first two nights.  He had the room to himself his whole stay, so I was able to sleep in the other bed in the room and they ordered trays for Mark, Leah and I at each meal.  It was a huge blessing and we are incredibly grateful.

 

Our day nurse: Robin was there for Wed/Thur/Fri, and Seth and I really liked her.  The other nurse that was amazing, even though we only had her our first night, was Stephanie.  Her infant daughter had just been diagnosed with Type 1 a year before.  As she came in each hour to test, she and I would talk a bit more about things diabetes related.  I am so grateful she was willing to share her story and her knowledge with me.

Seth woke up very excited because he was really hoping for breakfast.  He was starving.  Robin gently broke the news that his BG number had been too high that morning, so they were going to keep him on the IV insulin that day and let him eat dinner.  She showed him the hospital menu, which didn’t look very appetizing to Seth, so she offered to order him a Bacon Cheeseburger from the grill downstairs and his eyes lit up.  It’s the little things, right?

Right now, Seth is limited to 60 carbohydrates per main meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and 0 carb snacks.  So it was very interesting to watch Seth plan out his carb choices.  His hamburger bun had 30 carbs and of course he wanted ketchup (2 cb).  He REALLY wanted french fries with his burger, but when he realized he could only have ½ cup for 30 carbs, he decided (on his own) that a green salad (5 cb) with Ranch dressing (5 cb) would be a better choice.  He opted for strawberries (15 cb) and a Fuse (3 cb) to drink.  We had a total of 60 carbs.

When it came time for his next hourly BG test, they asked Seth if he wanted to do it and he said yes.  I was secretly thrilled that he was willing to do that (remember earlier mentioned aversion to needles, I wasn’t exaggerating).  So with much trepidation and lots of encouragement, Seth used his own Lancet and pricked his finger.  His eyes got really big and he exclaimed “mom, that doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as the hospitals”.  Again, it’s the little things.  So we squeezed on his finger in order to get enough blood for the hospitals strip AND our strip as I figured we might as well get used to using our monitor as well. 

Mark and Leah joined us at 10:00 just as the diabetes educator came in to teach us how to give injections and go over nutrition information with us.

It was a LOT of information and we were still processing everything, I was kind of glad to see her go so we could just be a family.

Mark and Leah headed home just before dinner to take care of the woodstove and the dogs.  It was Seth and I again.

At 6:00, his dinner arrived, and I had a happy boy. Now we had to figure out how to apply our insulin to the carbs.  They started out with a standard ratio of 1 unit of insulin per 15 grams of carbs for all 3 meals.  So that meant that Seth would need 4 units of Lantus (rapid acting insulin) to cover the carbs that he would be eating.  The nurse asked Seth if he wanted to do his own injection.  He had a look of pure panic on his face.  “No thanks.”  I offered to give him his first shot and he said that would be fine.  Seth asked me to get Grellow for him, because he didn’t want to watch.  So I put on my big girl panties and prepared the shot.   And I did it, and Seth didn’t even feel it.  Booyah! Take that diabetes!!!

At 9:00 it was time to give Seth his dose of Lantus, (long acting 24 hour insulin) and I did it again.  As a personal note of pride, I am happy to say that Seth has only been given injections by his father, himself and I. 

With these shots we have begun manually managing Seth’s diabetes.