Sick Days

Sunday late afternoon, Bekah came in from playing and laid down on the couch next to me. "I'm tired," she said. Immediately I ask her how her BG feels. "fine, I'm just tired". She probably over did it a little the day before when the sun was out, a rare sight this year here in the NW. Still it reminded me so much of the way she was prior to her dx that I felt uneasy. She decided to sleep on the floor in my room that night.

At 12AM she woke up crying that her ear hurt. I felt her head and decided she was a little warm. I'm not the kind of mom that takes my kids' temp all of the time. I usually do the kiss the forehead method and only if they are burning up do I hunt down the thermometer. I gave her some acetaminophen to help her sleep. Again I don't give my kids meds for every sniffle, I believe that our bodies were made to fight off illness and so if they have a mild fever I let it burn unless it is interrupting their sleep. With D it's a different story. I have to know if Bekah has a temp even a mild one so I know to check for ketones. It was 99.1 I decided that I was going to make an appt to have her ear looked at first thing in the morning. She has never had an ear infection before but there is a first for everything. The next morning she woke up with a tummy ache. "my ear doesn't hurt anymore" she beamed but then her face fell a little "but my tummy kind of hurts." No sooner did she get downstairs when the blue Power Aide Zero that she had been sipping on that morning came back up. (sorry TMI) I immediately had her check for ketones. Only trace. "whew" I could feel my blood pressure rise a little because I know managing T1 can get a little tricky when puking is involved. So much for taking her to the doc. I didn't want to infect anybody else or deal with puking in the doc's office if she only had a virus.

We checked BG levels and ketones every 2 hrs all day. Only one episode of trowing up. No ketones except for the trace that we got that morning and her BG level was great all day. She held pretty steady in the high 100s to low 200s. This was so much easier than what I expected on a sick day. I had heard nightmare stories about super high numbers and ketones. I put Bekah to bed that night fully expecting her to go to school the next day.

Tuesday morning Bekah got up and boldly stated that she was better, could she go to school. I told her we had to check 3 things, her BG, her temp and ketones and if all checked out then she was good to go. Her temp was 99.6 (hmm if all else is ok I'll prob let her go), BG was 99 (a little low to wake up but nothing we can't quickly fix), ketones were moderate. Where the heck did those darn ketones come from?! I got out my cheat sheet from the day before and treated the ketones plus 15 carbs for breakfast. I looked at her number again, 99. 99! Crap, she is going to plummet with that much insulin in her system. I had just had a 60 min class on sick days. I failed my test :( . I called up our D education team and left a crazy message in my panic on the sick day hot-line. They were so sweet when the called me back and told me to just give her 30 uncovered carbs and by lunch she should be around 200. Sure enough by lunch time she was at 186 and ketones were gone.

This is the last full week of school and kindergarten graduation is Friday. Poor Bekah, who loves school, had already missed two of those last few days. I looked at her at dinner and saw a little green discharge coming from her eye. (NO!!) Being the mom of four, I have seen this before and it is a telltale sign of a secondary infection. Hoping it would go away and was nothing, maybe even my imagination, I put Bekah to bed again with the hope of her heading back to school the next morning.She didn't seem to have much energy but I figured that would come back in due time.

Wednesday Bekah woke up with puffy eyes and lots of discharge, a temp of 99.6 and moderate ketones again.Our regular pediatrician didn't have room to squeeze us in but I did get in with another doc. Bekah hates going to the doctor so I talked up this lady that I have never met all morning to try to keep Bekah from crying. The doc actually exceeded my expectations. She was amazing! She was so good with Bekah too. It turns out that Bekah's ears are both infected and her ear canal in her right ear is also infected. She has conjunctivitis as well. We were given 3 scripts and we headed to the pharmacy to have them filled.

At the pharmacy poor little Bekah kept feeling worse and worse. I could tell because she seemed to be literally shrinking. As usual, one of the scripts wasn't covered by our insurance company so the pharmacy, the doc and the insurance company had to duke it out to get something that would help Bekah get better, that was covered. I left with the other two and went home to wait for them to call about the eye drops.

We stopped quickly to get Bekah's favorite lunch, deli mac-n-cheese. Both kids were sleeping by the time I got there so I contemplated skipping it. I knew that when Bekah woke up and there was no promised mac-n-cheese that I would have a flood of tears to deal with. As much as I hated it, I woke her up to go in the store. (I put David in the Mai Tai- I love that thing-he didn't even have a clue he was being transported).

Back home Bekah had her meds, ate some mac-n cheese and then laid down on the couch where I read to her for a couple of hours. She loved that and loved that she is so very close now to getting her first prize from the summer reading program at our local library. Then she napped. She woke up just long enough to test for ketones (negative) and eat dinner. Jason was home but being a teacher and this being the final week of school he had a ton of work to do so I packed up David and left the other kids in his care and went back to the pharmacy to retrieve the eye drops. When I got home I woke Bekah up just enough to get the drops in.

As I sit here and type this, it is Thursday morning. I am waiting for Bekah to get up so we can access the situation and see if school is in order today. I seriously doubt it. Tomorrow she has to be there for kinder graduation so, it's probably going to be best for her to rest one more day. Her BG at 2AM was 215. I haven't figured out how to check for ketones in the night because she wears as pull-up. I'm pretty sure she will wake up with her eyes glued shut. She will have to hang out with Daddy part of the day (today he is just packing up his classroom) because I have a pre-op appt with her dentist and she doesn't need to be there. She has a hard time with procedures and talk of them. I'm so ready for my little princess to feel better so we can enjoy our summer. (that is if the sun will ever stop playing shy)