I got the call at work. I can't remember the date, but I'm pretty sure it was the day after No. 1's fifth birthday.

I have a pretty casual relationship with the nurse practitioner I see. I'm sure that's why he felt comfortable giving me the news at work instead of calling me into his office to drop the diabetes diagnosis bomb on me. I had been seeing Harry for several years, mainly for a host of small things and because it was pretty easy to get in to see Harry on short notice. Need to see the doctor? Can you wait two days? Need to see Harry? Can you be here in 20 minutes? Not to take anything away from his skills or anything, but I've established that I'm not a patient person. (READ MORE)

A co-worker of mine recently told me about her morbidly obese future sister-in-law, who has "diabetes real bad."

"It doesn't exactly work that way," I told her, smirking like a diabetes snob. I went into the difference between type 1 and type 2 and told her that one doesn't get a bad case of diabetes. It's not like acne. So young, I thought. So naïve, I thought. So wrong. (READ MORE)

It took us just short of a year, but we finally discovered the right time of day to change Charlie's infusion set.

From the start of our pump training, we were instructed to change his site in the mornings. Before bed was not recommended for fear of low blood sugars.

So, we did as told.

And for months, Charlie's blood sugars were extremely high for a good part of the morning and into the early afternoon on site change days.

Our doctors weren't sure what to make of it. We all theorized that it was the stress of the site change sending him out of the stratosphere. Seemed to be a good enough explanation. He did absolutely flip out with site changes. The hope was that he would eventually not stress so much with the site changes and the blood sugar levels would fall into place.

Never happened and never happened. (READ MORE)

I came across this article recently from the BD Newsletter and it got me thinking about how Olivia behaves when her blood sugar is high.

Normally, she's your average teen-ager. She's sometimes sullen, sometimes goofy, sometimes talkative, all in a five minute span. But when her blood sugar is high, she can become weepy, rude, argumentative and very, very unpleasant. The really high highs make her feel sick, but it's the somewhat high highs that I loathe.
(READ MORE)

Michelle Kowalski

Turns out my dinner-time debacle last night wasn't my fault.

While I blamed myself for a blood sugar reading of 500 on my afternoon candy grazing and failure to bolus, my new medical accessory was actually the culprit.

Thinking the candy was the problem, I bolused for dinner and went on with my evening. I considered that my site was the problem, but it wasn't red nor itchy nor anything else out of the ordinary. Two hours after dinner, when I was still 500, I changed my site. (READ MORE)

kanocorn

When Susanne peels Charlie's pants down to show me the blood-filled pump tubing taped to his bottom, we curse quietly behind his back. Having the pump infusion set on his rump – he's unable to see how gruesome it is. It's just out of his periphery. A blessing at this moment. Acting like it's nothing is the hard part. Neither of us are good actors. Susanne bites her upper lip and points to where the bloody trail begins and ends.

Well this would explain the blood sugar of "HI."

I should back up a bit. (READ MORE)