Diabetes bloopers - D-Blog Week Post 3

As a pretty OCD mom when it comes to diabetes, we haven't had too many bloopers (only because I check, recheck, and recheck everything - which is almost a blooper in itself). The only ones I can recall are these:

1. Shortly after Sarah was diagnosed (within about a week), we opened the refrigerator to pull out her vial of insulin (before they gave us pens) and promptly dropped it on the floor - where of course it shattered. Insulin smells like sour bandaids, and we had that smell in the kitchen for awhile. We ended up jumping in the car and racing to Kaisers nearest 24 hour pharmacy to replace what was lost, and all was well.
2. We almost had a serious blooper a month or so after Sarah was diagnosed. She called me from her daycare because her bg was really high (I don't remember how high, I believe somewhere in the 300's). I calculated the correction dose and gave her the number. Then (thankfully) a lightbulb popped up over my head and I quickly asked "what did you eat for snack?". The answer? Smores. Smores with their gooey chocolate and marshmallow inerds. So I asked Sarah to go wash her hands, test again, and call me back. She was right in range, somewhere in the low 100's. I am SO glad I didn't have her take that correction dose. - And that was quite the lesson learned. We don't always make her wash her hands immediately before every test, but if we get a number that's higher than expected, we clean well and test again.
3. Sarah made her own blooper last week when she tested at school (because she wasn't feeling well), and then went on autopilot and bolused for her lunch - about 1.5 hours before lunchtime. She wasn't too unhappy about it. She ended up munching down several marshmallows to make up the carbs and her teacher never knew what happened. Poor kid...
4. My favorite blooper was a night only a few weeks ago when Sarah forgot to reattach her pump before she went to bed. She did, however, keep it close enough to her that as I was giving her corrections during the night, it didn't error for being out of range - so I didn't realize she wasn't wearing it until the next morning. Oops.

Unfortunately, part of having a disease like diabetes is making mistakes. Diabetes is never an exact science, because everything you do affects bloodsugar. You try to do the right thing, providing either the right amount of carbs or insulin. You hope for the best and are always prepared for the worse. Diabetics are probably the best prepared people on the planet. Sarah never leaves the house without her insulin and enough carbs to bring her up from any low blood sugar.

In order to improve our ability to help keep Sarah safe, she will soon be getting a diabetes alert dog. If you are interested in helping Sarah with this, please visit her facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ADiabetesServiceDogForSarah or her website at www.pawsforsarah.com