A Volleyball Spike Would Have Been More Fitting and Less Exhausting

Volleyball started this week.  We tried to hearken back to volleyball a year ago to figure out how to handle it diabetes-wise.  We could recall very little.

We did know she needed to eat dinner before the 6 p.m. start time, not wait until after.  At 5, her blood sugar was on the high end, around 240.  Dinner was a chicken pot pie with biscuit topping.  I don't usually make this version anymore because there seemed to be no way to bolus the biscuit part that worked.  But I'm still recovering from my accident of 2 weeks ago, and looking for anything soft to make that we can all enjoy. So the ease of making one meal all of us could eat won out.

We bolused dinner and corrected the bg, assuming the pot pie topping would be hanging around helpfully during volleyball.  She poured a bottle of G2 - the low carb gatorade - to bring to practice.  Sipping a few carbs of this at each break seemed helpful last year, as best as we could remember.

After practice, at 7:30, her bg was 142.

Frozen treat season started in earnest this week too.  It was a friend's birthday, so her mom took the girls for ice cream or italian ice after practice.  My daughter bolused for a cup of root beer italian ice at a place we've been before.

At 9:45 as she finally crawled into bed after a shower, finishing homework and regrouping for the next day, her blood sugar was 115.  Which seemed great.

At 10:20, I heard footsteps.  "I just checked and I'm 34."

34.

She drank eight ounces of juice (double her standard amount for a bg of 50-60).  We cuddled on the couch for the end of the baseball game.  She checked again.  56.  Better.  After another four ounces of juice she crawled back into bed around 10:45.  Now may be a good time to note that when the dexcom sensor came out on Tuesday we decided she could go a few days before starting a new one.

I stayed up, checking every 15-20 minutes.  The next check was 82.  I realized we should have set a temp basal as soon as 38 read out on the meter screen, but did so belatedly hoping that would preempt the need for more juice.  Next check:  78.  I waited it out, hoping for a turn around, not wanting to overdo. Fifteen minutes later:  65.  Another juice box.  A few more pages of my book later: 116.  Maybe we were finally out of the woods.  But for some reason I didn't trust it, so I stayed up.  Twenty minutes later?  72.  I reset the temp a little lower for another hour and went back to the sofa for another chapter.  87.  I finished my book.  One more check: 95, and my husband's alarm was set for 45 minutes from then.  I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer.

A quick prayer to God, and the diabetes gods - just to cover all the bases - and I crashed.

By the time my husband checked, she was up to the 160's and stayed there until morning.

Lessons learned?  Volleyball catches up with her. (This lesson sounds familiar in retrospect).  This establishment's italian ice seems to have fewer carbs than the standard calorie king estimate.  (This lesson also sounds familiar).  She probably should have stayed up until she hit a blood sugar of at least 70-ish and followed the juice with some peanut butter crackers.  (This lesson was taught to us while still in the hospital 12+ years ago).

Last lesson?  If you're going to have a night like last night, it should always precede a beautiful giant-iced-coffee-worthy day like today.