My step son has had low blood sugar twice since coming home from the hospital.  He said his symptoms were hunger, sweats, shakes.  Just like the doctors and nurses said.  The first time was in school after gym class.  He ate a fruit roll up and felt better.  He did not, however, take his blood sugar or go to the nurse.  He knows that the next time it happens we need to get a blood sugar number so that we can narrow down at what point his lows begin.

The second time was this morning at Dad’s house.  He was feeling a little shaky before breakfast.  He took his blood sugar and then ate.  It was 72.  So, we now know his lows start somewhere around 72.  That is good knowledge.  If nothing else we should do our best to keep him above 80 so he doesn’t have to go through such an unpleasant experience again.

Knowledge is Power.

The Apple Store in Manchester, NH exploded and new stuff ended up in my house!  A new magic track pad and a leather loop watch band.  Christmas literally came early! 

   

Beware!  Gear Acquisition Syndrome is a very real and very dangerous thing!  If you are not careful you too will end up with a house full of stomp boxes!  Teach your kids to be safe and grow up to play blues or jazz or any other style of music where you are encouraged to just plug straight into your amp! 

 

Jenny’s going to hurt me. 

 

The Bruins won last night.  They now have the same number of wins as the Patriots.  Let that sink in for a second.

I bought two new pieces of gear last week.  One for guitar, one for recording.  I haven’t even tried them out yet.  So much craziness, so little time for normalcy.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance before practice on Sunday.

When we got home from the hospital my wife declared that we were now a healthy eating household.  I supported that statement completely.  But… I had this suspicion that this time I wasn’t going to be able to stick to it.  I could almost taste the junk food I was going to be eating later that night.  On the upside though, I removed all soda from the house.  Boom!  No more of that crap to make our blood sugar go wacky.  As of this moment I haven’t had a soda since Tuesday at dinner.  Likewise I have not had any caffeine since Tuesday at dinner.  That’s probably part of why I am so damn tired right now.  I’ve been drinking water (with some fruit punch flavoring mixed in), which is why I’ve been to the bathroom three times since I punched in at work about five hours ago.  Just as important as the soda ban, I have surprised myself by not binge eating junk food.  I’ve been pretty good so far.  I had such a bad feeling when we started this discussion on Wednesday, but I’m feeling pretty much on board right now.  There is actually a lot of junk food in the house and I have been able to ignore it all.  Many many thanks to my beloved, genius, beautiful wife Jen for encouraging me.  Thank you, sweetie.

Now for the big news.  Rush released the R40 video and album today.  Why yes, Santa Claus, I would love to add the R40 blu-ray to my Christmas list.  HoHoHo to you too!  As for the audio CD… well, that’s weird.  I went to Google maps to see if there were any record stores near my office.  I will definitely buy a copy of this on CD… but then I thought.  iTunes.  I checked to see if it was available on iTunes and it was.  Just as I was about to click on the buy button I remembered… I already pay for Apple Music.  I don’t have to buy the record from iTunes.  I literally already have it available.  I don’t own a copy of it, but it’s there for my use.  Just before lunch I was able to pop it on and start listening.  It just seems… weird… ya know?  I was listening to a legitimate, legally obtained copy of the album without actually buying a copy for myself.  Weird… ya know?  Music subscriptions… it’s just not a part of who I am yet.  I feel like I’m doing something sneaky.  Ya know?

We woke up at 2am this morning to check my step son’s blood sugar.  The reading was really good.  At a little before 6am we took it again before breakfast and again it was good.  We calculated his insulin dose based on what he was going to have for breakfast and I drew it for him.  My hands were thankfully not shaking in fear as I did so (although it was a close call).  He’s using an app to track his readings, meals, and insulin intake.  I checked it a few minutes ago to see how he was at lunch and they have a blood sugar spike at just after 9am.  He was probably checking before gym and the nurse gave him a correction dose.  His lunch numbers were good again, but I’m going to be worrying about that morning spike.  Did I do something wrong?  I don’t think so, but did I?

Whatever it was, it wasn’t nearly as awful as last Friday.  He went into diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA.  If you want to scare the living shit out of yourself go and webmd that little bastard.  Then imagine it’s your wife’s 12 year old kid who you’ve known since age four and see if your heart doesn’t stop a few times.  Try hearing an ER nurse tell you that he is one seriously sick kid, and then hear an endocrinologist tell you that in 30 years he’d never seen anyone that sick.  Go on, I dare you.  I double dog dare you.

Things are normal now.  Note that I didn’t say ‘back to normal’ as we have to define a new normal.  We test blood sugar before each meal and again at 2am (which is probably temporary).  At school he goes to the nurse to get checked before lunch, gym class, and before he gets on the bus to go home.  He takes a long acting insulin dose at 9:30pm, and short acting insulin doses before each meal.  Those are the minimums.  There is nothing wrong with him taking his blood sugar reading every 10 minutes if he wants, except that we’d run out of strips and he’d have pin holes all over his fingers.  Extra insulin doses are possible but you run the risk of giving him a dose based on a blood sugar reading taken while the previous fast acting dose is still working (about three hours).  That can be bad.

That’s the routine at least.  We haven’t been doing this long enough to need to vary the routine.  Meaning, what if you go out to dinner?  How do you count carbs in a restaurant?  What if we go on a day trip or something, or even on a vacation?  Also, we’ve seen what high blood sugar looks like, but we haven’t seen low blood sugar yet and that is supposed to be worse.

Every time I start thinking about this I start getting overwhelmed.  Hell, this post was supposed to be about the new Rush live album that came out today.  When I start feeling like this though I have to stop myself and look at things objectively.  We are dealing with a boy who is adamant about handling all of this.  He wants to do it all himself.  Readings, counting carbs, injections, logging results, everything.  He seems to be seeing this as a challenge and he is so very up to it.  He also has two parents, two step parents, and a big sister who are all with him 100%.  We are all going to work together to make sure that boy has as normal a life as any boy.  This isn’t going to stop him.  You watch.  10 years from now he’s going to be working at Apple designing new features for OS X and iOS that will blow your mind clear out of your skull.  Count on it.  Screw diabetes, this kid is going places.

We are on day three of giving insulin injections at home.  Big changes may be coming.  We may be switching from syringes to pens!  Very exciting stuff!