Maybe I should have been pleased with the A1c of 7.8. It’s not so far from his best ever.
Neh. Not so much. I accepted the news apathetically, as if just informed by the waitress that they didn’t have Coke, just Pepsi.
Whatever.
For the amount of work that goes into managing this damn disease, 7.8 just doesn’t cut it for me. We/he deserve better.
We returned to CHOP to review the data from the first few weeks of continuous glucose monitoring. On the computer monitor, we could see the moments in which the jagged blue line (indicating the sensor) seemingly fell off the screen and disappeared.
"Ah, that was when Charlie decided he needed a break from it."
"Oh, that’s when the sensor came out."
"Ah, yes, that was the bloody one."
Though when targeting a five-day period in which Charlie was wearing the sensor, things actually looked really good. A steady line during the overnight in the area of 120-130 and then intermittent spikes like a shark’s tooth after every meal. His blood sugar tended to plateau in the high 200s to low 300s after breakfast and then came back into range about two and-a-half hours later. It was a very cool thing to see a play-by-play of Charlie’s blood sugar in this way.
"Well, he’s clearly responding to the insulin," the CGM instructor said.
"And his overnights look beautiful!"
Or so it would seem.
I told her about the many potential lows that don’t exactly show up on the graph because we head them off before it becomes a problem.
Like many before her, she said that we shouldn’t have to do that.
"It’s like we’re constantly juggling balloons and not letting them hit the ground," I said.
We looked at the trends together and she said, "what do you think we should do?"
She said it not in a "I’m testing you" sort of way, but instead like I was her medical professional peer and she really wanted to know what my thoughts were on how to proceed. For a moment, I felt like a doctor.
"I wouldn’t change the overnights one bit," I said. "I think we need to see how the rest of the day looks when there’s no carbs or bolus insulin at play. We should do some basal testing to see where we’re at," I continued.
She agreed.
If I had a pen, I would have loved to scribble some incomprehensible words on a prescription sheet and hand it to Charlie.
Now if I can only get that doctor’s salary.
