I'm a zombie when I wake up to test Charlie late at night or in the dark early hours of morning. It's not such a good thing when you're handling your child's lifeline in such a state of fuzz.

A couple nights ago, Charlie's blood sugar was 330 when I checked him before I went to sleep at about 10:30 pm. Not wonderful, but fixable with a little beep-beep arrow-arrow beep-beep, like I'm playing 1977 Mattel electronic football. I clip the pump back on Charlie's Spiderman pajama waistband and crash to sleep; setting the alarm for midnight to make sure everything is cool.

At midnight, my horrible alarm clock squawks for seven minutes until my brain is ready to accept that it is a sound with a greater purpose. Eyes barely open, I load the meter with a test strip and grab his sleeping hand that recoils and resists like a frightened snake. I manage to corner his writhing arm and hold it down long enough to take some blood.

398.

OK, I may be half asleep, but I can recognize that the correction I gave him at 10:30 did nada.

I pull the pump from Charlie's jammies and begin to beep-beep arrow arrow beep-beep, when something occurs to me. I don't recall the pump being "wireless." Why is there no tube connected to this pump?

Like Wile E. Coyote standing on air before plummeting off the cliff, I hold the detached pump in my hands in bewilderment before it sinks in.

The tube had snapped right off the pump. Charlie wasn't getting any insulin. His robot sheets, however, got 1.2 units. It's not the first time this has happened.

Thank you Medtronic. Thanks for the defective infusion sets. How about I cut off your air supply for about an hour and a half? How does that sound?