Eric went to school today, and I went with him. It was... mixed. On the one hand, he was VERY excited and loved riding the bus. He even walked up to the teacher as he entered the room and said firmly (in the clear expectation of instant results), "I want to learn something now."
On the other hand, the excitement sent his blood sugar into the stratosphere, so while he was reading books and creating the letter A all over the room with his teachers and new friends, I spent the entire 4 1/2 hours surreptitiously poking him, correcting him, checking ketones (none found), and even changing his site during snack time when it became clear that the bolus I'd given him at 9:00 wasn't impacting his BG. It made not a damn bit of difference: he spent the entire time above 300 and, by midday, he was pushing 500 DESPITE 2 extra units of insulin. I had to turn off his sensor because the alarm kept interrupting the class. I've never seen him so insulin resistant! Hopefully that will wear off as he becomes used to school.
I did, by the way, make that pamphlet I was considering. I think maybe I went a little overboard — it's 10 pages long, with a cover and table of contents included, but it has every possible piece of pertinent info included. How to check blood sugar, when to check blood sugar, when to give insulin/juice, what Eric acts like when he is low or high (although after today they should have a pretty good sense of what he's like when high!), what to do if the CGM alarm keeps going off, and when and how to use glucagon. It's about as comprehensive as I could make it without going into crazy detail.
Are you able to stay at school with him until he stabilizes? As a teacher I know it would be challenging to monitor his condition while managing a class of new kinders. Ihave been reading about Eric for awhile now and am so excited he started school! Congrats to you both.
So good to hear that he enjoys school so much. Too bad his numbers went so high. School is all about routines so hopefully the numbers will stablize once he settles in. Hope you keep us posted.
Turns out it wasn't stress hormones. Turns out, the site I put in him at 10:00 was no darn good. We had BG over 600 and dark red ketone strips at 3 PM. When I changed the site, it was doubled over on itself. Somehow the Mio inserter hadn't gotten it through the skin. He was fine by dinner. Damn diabetes, screwing up the big day!
The initial 300 was stress though. I changed the site "just to be on the safe side," irony of ironies. As far as staying with him is concerned, I can't, but I know the nurses at the school and they are competent to do the job. And if they need help, we are 2 minutes drive from the school at all times.
Also this kindergarten program is a "jump-start" program that has 2 teachers and a class aide for 15 kids. The goal is to get some of the kids who are either lagging behind the others in their age group or who have special needs to get accustomed to school in advance of starting full-day in the fall. Only 30 kids were accepted of the 90 who applied, but they had pegged Eric for the program from the start, as much because they wanted time to get his routine down as anything. His performance during his assessment was subpar, but given that the assessment was interrupted twice by his pump beeping low, I am not overly surprised!
Excitement as a child always made me bottom out. But, I was on MDI then. Pumps are so different, aren't they?
Every day is a new challenge... most of the kids have breakfast first thing, and I have it set up so Eric has breakfast at the daycare under the experienced eye of his daycare provider, but this morning the nurse had to hustle down to the classroom because they had a chocolate-chip muffin for the kids (as breakfast??? whose BRILLIANT idea of good morning nutrition is THAT??) and she had to get it away before Eric scarfed it. She did let him have his milk though.
Ha, Laura, I'd rather be dealing with highs than lows any day... bet Quinn is loving the "eat whatever you want" instruction though!
