Trusted too much
Scott Benner
I fell into the trap... I ignored what I was told, only for a few hours but that was enough.
My brother is home for the holidays and last night we went out to dinner to celebrate his last night with us. Arden ate, I bolused and felt great about it because there was no spike visible on her CGM. We went about our evening talking and just enjoyed the time together - it was a great evening!
Now it’s important to say that the food she ate would normally have caused a spike and that more often then not it would have required a maintenance bolus about 90 minutes after she finished eating. About ninety minutes after dinner I asked Arden what her Dex said and she was slightly elevated with a horizontal arrow and she hadn’t heard a beep in hours. I remember thinking that I must be getting better at estimating restaurant carbs and then she left to play with her brother.
Before bed I looked at her Dex and she was 150ish, which I was okay with because she has been dropping around midnight these last few nights. Then I tested her and the number hit me like a cold glass of water to the face - 413.
I re-test and it came up again 400+. Now I can feel my stress level growing and I’m normally pretty hard to rattle. How long has she been this high I wonder. I mumble, “been high for five hours I bet”. Kelly asks me what I’m muttering and I respond in an unpleasant tone. I’m angry now. Angry at diabetes, at DexCom, at myself for thinking that I could enjoy a few hours with my brother. I’m just pissed off. During this mess Arden says, “I think I bumped my Dex a little while ago”. “Poor kid, can’t graze the doorjamb in the car”, I think to myself - and that makes me even angrier.
I take a deep breath, change her Dex transmitter, apologize to my wife for snapping at her and bolus for the high BG.
It’s only a few hours and this certainly isn’t a cause for alarm, Arden is fine. No ketones, no sick stomach she never really knew - but I know. I can’t really ever shake the notion that I just cost her time from the end of her life. I know that I can’t or rather shouldn’t think about all of this in that light but I just can’t help it. I don’t have the same life that other people have, my daughter doesn’t, my son doesn’t, my wife doesn’t, we just don’t.
The real bitch about type I is that when other people make a mistake raising their kids they don’t really know that they’ve messed up. Saying the wrong thing to your ten year old that causes him to seek a therapist when he’s thirty is probably par for the parenting course but there isn’t meter with a test strip that tells you every few hours that you’ve fucked up. When your son tells you that he’s not as happy as he could be twenty years from now you can bury your head in the sand and blame his girlfriend (that you knew was no good for him) and pretend that you were a perfect parent. We can’t do that. If Arden ever experiences a decrease in her vision, a failed kidney or any of the other side effects that come from having the inside of your veins, arteries and organs sandblasted, well, I’ll know that it was me. I forgot, was too tired, mis-calculated, whatever the slip up, I did it. I know that I’m only human and that I’ll make mistakes but boy does diabetes give you a lot of opportunities to make those mistakes. Then just when I’m about to really feel bad for myself I remember that I’m actually good at this and then I feel ten times worse for the people who really struggle.
So in the spirit of the pursuit of transparency about type I diabetes, I give you this post. Our technology failed, I failed, Arden paid, my relationship with my wife took some shrapnel... in short, my family lives with diabetes.
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Ali