Friday

It was 6:45 p.m.

My daughter had gone straight from play practice to meet friends who were watching the end of a wrestling match in the high school gym. The plan was to go out for dinner afterwards.

I received a text:

'Dexi is dead and the meter won't turn on.'

We knew the Dexcom sensor was set to expire before the evening was out. But plan B was that she had her meter and would be fine using that instead.

But now she was not.

I grabbed two AAA batteries and let her know I would meet her at the front doors of the school.

'But what if it isn't the batteries?,' my daughter wisely replied.

So I also grabbed her spare pink one-touch mini meter.  Since two dead meters don't equal a useful one, I popped in a test strip to check it, and, inevitably, its battery was dead. It takes one obscure flat battery. By the time I found a spare one of those, the contents of our 'diabetes box' were strewn across my daughter's floor and she was texting, 'Are you here yet?'

I pulled up to the doors, and she came out. She sat in the car with me and replaced the batteries in the regular meter. "Low meter batteries," it read.

"But I just put them in there- you brought new batteries, right?" I had, straight out of a container full of new batteries in the basement, I reassured her. Fortunately, the pink mini meter was working just fine so she was equipped for dinner.

She enjoyed her evening out and got home early enough to put in a new Dexcom sensor before bed.

The next morning I replaced the batteries in the usual meter one more time, and it worked.

Weird stuff can happen on any given Friday.

Thursday

My daughter and I had dinner around 5:45. It was a regular meal. In fact it was leftovers, so it was the exact same thing she'd eaten earlier in the week. She bolused for the carbs with no correction since her blood sugar was in range.

She left at 6:25 for jazz band. I left at 7:10 for choir rehearsal. My husband, who we usually leave home alone on Thursday nights, was out late for a work event. By the time I pulled into my destination, I had a Dexcom alert on my phone. My daughter was low-ish. She was in the 60's. Which had happened the night before after dinner too, and she'd gotten kind of stuck there. There are a couple of days every month when sticky lows tend to occur, and I began to wonder if that was what was happening.

I texted her suggesting that, given the stickiness of last night's low, suspending the pumps's insulin delivery for a while might be a good idea.

By the time I got upstairs to my rehearsal I had another Dexcom alert and she was now in the 50's. She had not texted back. I resorted to texting, "Please tell me you are okay." Which at the time I felt might not be well received, but I was nervous enough not to care.

She replied that she was, that she would suspend insulin delivery on her pump, and that she'd had a juice box.

For the next 25 minutes I sang and texted and watched the Dexcom app and wished my husband was home, two blocks from my daughter, to run her up some more juice. The Dexcom alarms went from low to urgent low. I realized I'd stopped singing entirely.

By 7:55 my daughter had consumed everything in her bag and a sugar packet she'd scavenged from the band director's desk. Her blood sugar had dropped into the 40's.

I left rehearsal, clutching my phone, mysteriously muttering, "I need to go," and zipping out the door.

By the time I got in my car, 2.5 miles away from the high school, the Dexcom app read 'LOW.' That meant her blood sugar had dropped below 40.

When I texted my daughter I was leaving, she replied, 'Why? No. I'm fine. Go back. Don't Worry.'

That didn't work.

I did not drive the speed limit. I texted and drove. I Dexcomed and drove. And I prayed that my daughter would continue to text me and that all of the steps she'd taken so far would tide her over until I could help.

I ran in and out of my house to grab a juice bottle. I double-checked I still had glucagon in my purse from our Christmas trip.

She was back 'up' to 44.

I texted her I was on the way to the school with the juice.

'Well I can't leave.'

I left a bottle of Apple and Eve outside the band room door, hoping nobody would think it was anything other than a sealed bottle of apple juice, and asked her to let me know when she'd gotten it. I assumed she would come to her senses and sneak out and retrieve it quickly and surreptitiously. If she didn't I'd have to go back in and make a scene.

She'd retrieved and consumed it long before I'd driven the two blocks back home.

As I obsessively refreshed the Dexcom app while trying to distract myself with something on the Food Network, I saw the numbers begin to rise and I began to breathe.

When jazz band was over at 9, she drove home with a safe blood sugar of 90.

This wasn't a case of being unprepared. Maybe she was un-overprepared. But when leaving the house for two and a half hours, it's extraordinary to expect to be in a situation where you consume 45 grams of carb and suspend insulin delivery while your blood sugar continues to drop like a rock. At least after an accurately bolused dinner, and no unusual level of activity.

I'm grateful for whatever combination of grace, steps taken by us, and dumb luck saved us from a bigger disaster. From 7:30-9 last night was the most scared I've been of diabetes in years. We work so hard to keep things predictable and on an even keel but this was a sobering reminder that diabetes is, inherently, a dangerous disease.

Every diabetes scare we've had has resulted in steps towards preventing a repeat. Extra juice bottles will be squirreled away around my daughter's home-away-from-home in the band room and stage area of the high school. She'll stuff a few more airheads in her diabetes bag.

Unfortunately we know that there's always another unpredictable moment lurking, on any given Thursday.

Scene of the Crime

On Christmas eve I had the unexpected opportunity to revisit the emergency room where my daughter was diagnosed with T1D.

I was the patient this time, having passed out on the kitchen floor of my in-laws' home first thing in the morning. It turns out that I probably should have been taking better care of the bronchitis that had been brewing over the preceding week instead of powering through Christmas prep, travel and time with family. The good news was that the experience was more surreal than serious and I'm making what promises to be a full recovery from both the bronchitis and the ribs I injured on the way down.

We lived two towns away from my in-laws when my daughter was diagnosed, so the drive to the hospital at dawn was familiar. Winding roads taken at a speed slightly over the limit, the beginning of daylight, anxiety and uncertainty. At the ER entrance there seemed to be an upgraded reception area, but the interior was about the same.

I was settled onto a gurney in an ER sized cubicle room and asked a hundred questions. A team of professionals got busy taking my vitals, taking some blood, and hooking me up to machines to continuously monitor my oxygen, blood pressure and heart. And all I could think about was 16 years and 3 days before, when I stood where my husband was standing. Out of the way, but in clear view, watching my daughter being hooked up to all of those things. And the interminable wait while they tried to get blood and insert an IV into her tiny dehydrated veins. I made out much better in that department.

Near the end of my 4 hour visit I was taken for a walk around the unit while hooked up to equipment to monitor my blood pressure and oxygen - making sure nothing dropped precipitously while I was upright and moving.

We passed the cubicle my daughter had been in. We saw the conference room where the doctor had taken us to discuss her condition. We walked over the place where I had stood with the helicopter EMT when she demanded insulin be started before transporting my daughter.

When I was released, I exited through the ER doors and we drove past the helipad from which my daughter and I had taken off, headed to the big children's' hospital in the city. We drove back to my in-laws' where my daughter had been hanging out with her grandfathers, playing cards, starting a crock-pot dinner and making and bolusing for her lunch.