Tuesday, June 14, 2011

and a cat...


Fluffy joined our family yesterday! Hmmmmm - wonder if we can train her to recognise hypos?

Nothing much else to say about Fluffy - just an introduction really!

So, it's been a little while!

We survived my son's school camp! YAY! And educated another person about the joys (NOT) of T1D in the process!

When I met with the people running the camp the week before the start of camp although I was happy that they were taking things seriously I gained the distinct impression that they thought that I was making a big thing out of something that was relatively easy to manage.

After discussing what to do about camp with the Diabetes team at the hospital I reduced my son's basal rates on his pump, mainly because I knew that he was going to be quite active and the weather was going to be very cold - so the aim was to reduce the chances of hypos.

I made the changes to his pump about 5 days before camp to see how he'd manage on the lower insulin doses - and during those 5 days he stayed well within range! No highs at all, despite having very very small doses of insulin running in the background! Of course that did not allay my fears about hypos at all!

However, the whole time he was at camp he was running high! The woman running the camp thought that this was okay because, "at least he wasn't having a hypo - that's the most important thing!" Until... on the 3rd day she had someone helping her out with my son because they were doing abseiling and caving - a friend of hers has a son with T1D and is on a pump - so this friend was there for the day. When this friend saw my son's BGL's over the last few days she had a long talk to the woman from the camp about the dangers of running high!

By the end of the camp the hostess was exhausted and actually apologised to me for making any assumptions about the care of a child with Type 1 Diabetes! She told me that she spent the entire time worrying, and drove my son nuts by asking him to test his BGL's all the time. 

I told her that I was pleased that my son's camp was first because having him there has given her a "trial run" for when my daughter goes to camp later in the year. She asked what I meant about that, given that managing my son's condition for the week was so difficult - I then told her that my son is "easy" compared to my daughter when it comes to T1D management.

I'm pretty sure she's hoping I'm going to take up her offer to have me accompany my daughter on her camp!

Of course I hardly slept at all the whole time he was at camp. Yes, I had to get up to test my daughter anyway - but every night the hostess sent through text messages or made phone calls to tell me what was happening with my son - which was fine. 

But as any parent of a T1D kid knows, sleep does not come easily when they are not in your care.

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