www.yellowstonenationalpark.org

Over the weekend, after walking the dog, Olivia came to me to show me her pump site. It was oozing blood and had soaked the sticky stuff as well as a good-sized spot on her shirt. She said it was really hurting her and would I help her take it off and put in a new one?

In the middle of a small family party, we went up to her room to fix her up. I pulled the site out and blood gushed everywhere; on to her sheets, her shorts, it was a mess. Could I find gauze? Nope. So I grabbed cotton balls. Word to the wise: cotton balls stick to blood. A lot. And they pull apart and make a big mess.

I ran down the hall and grabbed a couple of wash cloths. I wet them down and went back down to her room to mop her up. After finally getting her to stop oozing blood, we put some Neosporin on the site and slapped a bandage on it. I put another site in, on the other side of her torso, towards her back a bit - we're trying to get her off using her stomach quite so much.

The place where her bad site was looks fine today. I'm not sure what happened to cause it to do that - we've never had that happen before. She doesn't think she bumped it or anything and she's certainly had more ocassion to bump and knock into things than she did while walking the dog. Could an infection cause that to happen?

Very weird. Diabetes is always throwing curve balls at me. It's like walking on to a Little League field and finding out that Tim Wakefield is pitching that day.