A1c & General Update

Today was Vanderbilt Day for Andrew! It was an easy day since Kaitlyn didn't have to have her OGTT. We left at a respectible 8:30 a.m. & were home by 2:30! Andrew's A1c was 7.9, which is up. The A1c feels like a report card in diabetes parenting. I got a C. I was perfectionist student even when the stakes didn't involve the lifetime health of my child. It stinks, but all we can do is try again. Truth be told, we aren't surprised. He ran high after having strep & then had another virus. I was slow in making changes. He has needed corrections at night, but I get nervous about raising nighttime basals. Anyway, we reduced the breakfast ratio (I'm not sure I agree, but we'll try), lowered the Insulin Sensitivity Factor (ISF) so that he will get more insulin to treat a high, and raised the basal in the afternoon on his weekend basal & the nighttime basal on both weekdays and weekends. Next time, they want to give him the pneumococcal vaccine and do blood work to check his thyroid.

Otherwise, Andrew is doing well. He has started baseball and is having fun. I have started reading forums on a website called Children With Diabetes (CWD). It has been very informative, and most of the kids play baseball with their pumps even though Animas told us not to. Our endo also recommended playing connected, so we are giving it a try. Andrew is excited not to have to try and pull tubing from his rear or leg right before a game! So far, he's doing much better connected. He's dropping fast at the end of practice, so we will start experimenting with temp basals soon.

Speaking of experimenting, we had our first successful pizza bolus yesterday!!! I'm sure that doesn't sound like much, but pizza sends him up for HOURS! We have this combo feature on the pump to help with high fat, high carb meals like pizza, but it is experimentation to find what works for you. We have tried so many different combos! After reading on CWD what worked for some of those kids, we decided to try to bolus for all the pizza immediately AND all the pizza again spread out for 8 hours. Yes, we bolused 200% of what he ate. And it worked!!!

Andrew also had his first sleepover with a friend other than our next door neighbor a couple of weeks ago. The mom was wonderful and wanted to take very good care of him. We managed his D mostly over the phone. He called before meals with his number & what he was going to eat so we could calculate carbs. Then he called back if he ate anything extra. He drank milk before bed without insulin to keep him safe through the night. He woke up in the 300s, so we overdid it. Still, he had a great time, and felt fairly normal.