Tuesday, August 05, 2008

I made a wicked good Banana Cream Pie

It is difficult to be sure just how many grams of carbs are in a slice, though. So, Dylan just guessed. For every 15 grams of carbs that he eats, he takes one unit of Novolog (fast acting insulin). Knowing that the pie would have a LOT of carbs, he took six units of Novolog.

Well, six units was too much. His blood glucose tanked. This was shortly before bedtime, and if he is chasing a low, he can't go to bed. It is too risky to go to sleep with low blood sugar, because you might not wake up.

By 11:00pm, he was at a good number, so he wanted to check just one more time, around 11:15. He plopped down on the couch and fell fast asleep. At midnight, I tried to wake him up, but he was too sleepy. I figured I could just check his sugar myself, but he had left the test strips in some odd place, and I couldn't find them. So, I kept trying to wake him up. Finally, he woke up enough to realize that he needed to go to bed. He was still dressed, so he went to the laundry room to take off his clothes (he does this rather than worry about having dirty clothes in his room).

I was in the kitchen, waiting for him, so we could check his sugar when I realized that he wasn't undressing. No, he was standing there and I'll be darned if it didn't sound like he was pouring water on the dirty clothes. Water? Where would he get water? WATER??? Yikes!

"Dylan!! Are you peeing???" No response.

"Dylan!" I ran to where he was and sure enough, he was sleepily relieving himself all over the pile of dirty clothes!

I started howling with laughter! "Dylan! You are in the laundry room! You are peeing on clothes! This is the laundry room!!"

He looked at me with a vacant stare, laced with a bit of annoyance.

I was laughing until tears ran down my face! Dylan was peeing on my laundry! He was clearly annoyed with me for yelling at him. Poor child was still asleep, apparently. I suggested to him that he stop peeing and finish in a more appropriate place, but was met with obstinate resistance. Not gonna happen. He couldn't figure out who this crazy woman was, much less why the crazy woman was yelling and laughing.

With no choice left but to wait, I tried to maneuver my hand around the yellow stream, and remove items that might benefit from not being covered in pee. When he was finished, I immediately filled the washing machine.

By the time he was finished peeing (it was a looong pee), he was awake enough to check his own blood sugar. He was high (245 mg/dl). Typical. It happens every time he has a bad low. He eats sugar to bring it up, but his liver spills extra sugar into his bloodstream an effort to compensate. Before long, he is way above normal.

Just for reference, normal BG (blood glucose) readings in a non-diabetic stay pretty close to 100 mg/dl, with a little fluctuation up and down. Even after eating a lot of sugar/carbs, a non-diabetic would never have a reading over 200 mg/dl. As a matter of fact, if a person ever has a reading of over 200 mg/dl (as long as it is accurate), he/she would be diagnosed with diabetes