Leo Reynolds

Eat dinner no later than five pm and fast until seven am. Perform five blood sugar checks throughout the night. Fast until twelve pm, six pm or ten pm. Check your blood sugar every two hours. Does this sound familiar?

You guessed it. Basal tests. My least favorite thing about the pump.

I hate having to eat at a required time (and worrying about what I eat to make sure there isn't a huge delay). I hate having to check my blood sugar every two hours. I find it a little frightening to fast for that many hours at a time. Plus, I just hate fasting (I like to eat when I'm hungry). (READ MORE)

In the final hour of the third straight morning of basal testing, Charlie finally had enough.

"Can I eat something now?" He yelled from his room.

"Something WITH carbs!" he added.

At this point Charlie had gone quite savage - pouncing on slow-moving stink bugs and flicking them in his mouth like popcorn and licking the carpet up and down in search for old crumbs and juice stains.

We spent the long holiday weekend testing Charlie's morning basal rates. The results were extremely telling.

Take a look at Saturday morning's fasting numbers:

7 am - 118
8 am - 141
9 am - 228
10 am - 260
11 am - 192
12 pm - 186 (READ MORE)

No, not an unpublished picture book from Eric Carle's darker days. This very hungry vampire is full-bellied and satisfied after "pigging out" on Charlie's blood all night; his fingertips unknowingly served buffet style while he slept.

The mood was ripe for basal testing. It wasn't a site-change day. There wasn't a cold brewing. He didn't have pizza or any other type of slow-digesting fatty foods. He didn't have an excessive amount of physical activity during the day. He wasn't ovulating (that's certainly good news). He wasn't on steroids (yet). Baseball doesn't start until Spring. He didn't have a meltdown just prior to bedtime because he thought his sister was being "sartastic" when she said his victory over the whomping willow tree in the Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets video game was "fascinating." Yes, the mood was ripe. (READ MORE)

Is it so much to ask for to want to wake up every hour from midnight to 7 am and take small drops of blood from my 5-year-old son all night long? I'm sure this is every dad's fantasy. Insane, the things I wish for now.

We have been trying to do overnight basal testing for Charlie now for thirteen days straight. We just can't do it. It's absolutely ridiculous. Every single night we're forced to abort our mission before we can even get started. What's most frustrating is that all we need as a prerequisite is to have him somewhere in the 120 to 220 area at about 9 pm-10 pm, when the dinner insulin has run its course. Amazingly, we can't do it. Night after night. (READ MORE)