Lows Lows Lows.

Still sort of struggling for some sort of 'reasoning' where D is concerned here in the F household. Maybe this whole chasing game is going to take longer to accept than I thought but I hate feeling like I understand so little about something so BIG that has to do with my daughter. She's so young, she depends on me to take care of her and feeling so confused and stumped by some of the things that come up SO often lately makes me feel like a bit of a failure. I know it's temporary and things change day to day, but it can be tough to get through some days.

Yesterday, for example, Sierra for some unknown reason had a horrible bought of lows. Now, technically speaking anything under 80 is 'low'. Sierra frequently hits the high 40s, 50s and low 60s. I mean at least once daily. The problem I'm running into is that the other parts of the day she's either high or just about right - and these lows are like drive-bys. Totally random on any given day, never the same time twice, never the same circumstances etc. We've already lowered her Lantus so she wavers between 200-250 and then lows. Very few 'in range' numbers this past week.

What's probably more unfortunate is the lack of available phone support or turn around with our endo team at Stanford. They're very busy, they need at least one or two other endocrine nurse educators (which they'd probably overload shortly after their arrival anyway) - but oncall sometimes seems extreme, other times playing phone tag with the nurses can be frustrating. I have another child, I have times when I'm putting kids to bed, or am going to the bathroom or am driving and don't hear the phone or can't answer. Tag isn't exactly ideal in our current situation, but it's the name of the game right now.

Yesterday was especially rough. She started out great, 149 - awesome. She was in the mid-200s after breakfast - which is typically so I don't worry about it. 195 at lunch, great! My mom and I took her to the mall for a quick trip (just short of an hour), I tested again when we got back despite her behavior being completely normal - 51. Really? Juice. 20 minutes. 63. REALLY? Waited 15 more to see if we're just slowly going up - 75. Gave a few crackers to boost her theoretically as it normally would. Drove home, tested an hour later - 58. More juice. Finally 115. Whew. She passed out on the living room floor (just a nap - not literally) after dragging all of her blankets upstairs into the living room and laying them meticulously flat on the floor:

I imagine she was tired from being low for a good portion of time, so I let her rest for about 45 minutes before waking her to go out to dinner (and tested of course before hand). 61. *sigh*. Lots of juice. 209 at dinner. Finally. Now I'm bringing all of her ratios down and she stayed over 240 all night. I'm having school test her hourly today just to be safe. I can't handle all of the 40s she's had lately, it's scary!

We have our clinic appointment (once every 3 months you test for A1C levels - which is basically a blood panel that gives you a # that says how well you've been managing her blood sugar according to her body along with meeting with your endos and asking questions/going over doses and tweeking numbers) next Wednesday and I'm chomping at the bit.

Once we finish moving next week and get settled we're going to probably put in the paperwork to get the medtronic - I have a few questions I want to ask about in person at our appointment first. I also think a CGM is going to have to be in our semi-near future at this point. Not thrilled about sticking two needles into her that need to stay on all of the time, but I'm not thrilled about her numbers or frankly her disease either - so accepting some things I'm not happy about for the greater good is just going to have to be par for the course.

That's our update this week... sadly not fantastic news, but we keep chugging along.