Stealthy


This article appeared in our local paper a week or so ago.  From the Associated Press, it describes Medtronic's 'smart pump' research, with its automatic shut off for low blood sugar.  While a furrowed brow is usually the end result of my reading diabetes articles in the popular press, this one seemed fairly well fact-checked. 

What caught my attention was this sentence related to fear of overnight hypoglycemia:

Parents of children with diabetes often worry so much about this that they sneak into their bedrooms at night to check their child's blood-sugar monitor.

I clearly need to change my modus operandi for 2 a.m. checks. 

My current method involves stepping on several squeaky floorboards on the way in.  I turn on the flashlight.  About half the time I manage not to shine it right in her face.  When I put a strip in the meter, it beeps.  I stab her finger, then squeeze it, sometimes pretty hard, to get blood on the test strip.  The meter beeps again.  A couple of times a month, I have to wake her up to give her juice.  I can't say I never drop something on the floor sometime during the process.

With a CGM midnight finger pricks aren't always necessary, but beeping and waking for juice are still standard parts of the picture.

Clearly I'm doing it all wrong.  I need to get myself a black ski-mask and memorize the squeaky floorboards.  I'll also need a 'diabetes device silencer,' but I'm not sure I have the black market connections to make that happen.  The outstanding question is how to sneakily give a sleeping child juice...






2 comments:

  1. Now I'm picturing you in a black ninja outfit sneaking around like a criminal... LOL!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Happy that kids are sound sleepers. My husband turns on the *overhead light* for these checks! So not a ninja.

    ReplyDelete

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